


B-side

by OutlandishNotion



Series: B-side Tracks [1]
Category: Katana ZERO (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Drug Addiction, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Post-Canon, Zero Gets Therapy, outsider pov, working through issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27955997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OutlandishNotion/pseuds/OutlandishNotion
Summary: A psychotherapist is approached by a secretive client with strange symptoms, well-guarded trauma, and an unfortunate aversion to therapy.
Series: B-side Tracks [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2158470
Comments: 52
Kudos: 40





	1. Session 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the plot is resolved, however that may be, with the assumption that Zero rescues the little girl (whether she's real or not). A foolhardy attempt at wrangling something resembling a happy ending out of this mess.  
> Now watch this get completely wrecked by canon.
> 
> Inspired by [Demonology and the Tri-Phasic Model of Trauma: An Integrative Approach](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20177950/) by [Nnm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nnm/pseuds/Nnm) (which I actually never finished reading but will 100% rec it anyways to any Good Omens fans).

It was almost closing time when I got a call from the receptionist downstairs. The city lights had already given a cold orange hue to the cloud cover above the roof window of my office, and I could hear the evening rush hour starting up on the streets below.

“Hey, doc. Got another client waiting.”

“Really? There shouldn’t be anyone else scheduled.”

“I think he’s looking for a consultation,” she insisted. “He’s definitely one of yours. Looks like a weirdo.”

“…Fine. Please let them know I’m coming.”

The office space I’d set up my practice in had a shared receptionist and waiting area. The setup—and more often than not, the receptionist's attitude—wasn’t ideal for setting clients at ease, but it was better than nothing. I put down the papers I’d been filing and headed downstairs.

It was late, so the waiting room was empty save for a single young man slumped on one of the plastic chairs arranged in a haphazard row. The one closest to the door, I noticed. Not that it was necessarily an indicator of anything, but I still tended to pay attention to those sorts of things.

What was obvious, though, was the reason why the receptionist had called him a weirdo. He was dressed in some sort of costume, complete with a sword that I hoped was just a plastic replica. He hadn’t reacted to my entrance at all; he kept staring into the wall in front of him, unfocused.

“Good evening,” I greeted with a vague wave to catch his attention. “I’m Dr Talbot. You were looking for me?”

Slowly, the man jostled himself away from whatever thought he’d been immersed in. He nodded. “I want to book an appointment.”

“People usually find it more convenient to make bookings over the phone.”

“I tried. It didn’t work out.”

Ah. That would explain the few calls I’d gotten over the past week, where the caller had immediately hung up on me. It wasn’t terribly unusual for clients to have trouble making appointments over the phone, often due to anxiety issues or difficulty committing without first seeing me in person.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Yes, we can schedule you in now.” I took out my pocket planner. The man straightened a little, or perhaps tensed. “Is Thursday good? I have an opening at one o’clock.”

“Okay.” He didn’t make any motion to check a calendar of his own, which in my experience was an indication of a few possibilities. By far the most common one being that the person did not have much going on.

“All right then,” I said while jotting down the time, “mister…?”

My question was left hanging in the air. The man simply stared at me.

“What is your name?” I rephrased.

He kept staring for a few beats too long. “Shinju Sakamura.”

“Very well, Mr Sakamura.” I wrote it down, anyways, despite how long he’d hesitated and the fact that he did not look very Japanese at all, apart from his getup. “I look forward to seeing you on Thursday.”

He nodded, stood and picked up that sword of his. My attempts at politeness hadn’t done much so far, but I still held the door open for him, and watched as he slunk back out through the reception area. As he went, I noticed the scarring on the crook of his bare forearm. Track marks. Right.

As far as first time client meetings went, this one certainly left me feeling like we had our work cut out for us.

\---

By the time it was Thursday, I’d gotten occupied with several other clients. It was only at lunchtime when I started wondering whether the terse man would show up. He seemed to fit the profile of a first-time client who’d make an appointment only to lose their nerve soon afterwards. One of the minor tragedies of my work, situations where help was needed most but never fully asked for. However, as I was finishing my sandwich, the receptionist rang to let me know he had in fact arrived.

He was in the same chair as last time, but unlike then, he actually turned to look at me when I arrived. He was still wearing the same robe as before, still showing a bare shoulder, and I couldn’t help but think that it didn’t look like the right kind of attire for the fall weather that was steadily growing colder.

There was also a woman in the waiting room, from the put-together look of her going to the accounting firm next door, impatiently sitting on the chair next to the elevator and shooting deathly glares at my client.

“Mr Sakamura,” I called, trying to inject pleasantness into my voice despite my irritation towards the woman. “I’m ready to see you.”

He got up and we rode the elevator all the way up to my floor, in silence. Sometimes that was the most comfortable option for everyone involved.

“Is that a real sword?” I asked as I opened the door to my office.

For a second the man looked a little shifty, but then said: “Yes.”

Of course. “Could you please leave it next to the doorway? I don’t allow weapons in my workplace. Next time, it would be best if you could leave it at home.”

As I feared he got hesitant, almost confused. But in the end, he dutifully removed the scabbard from his belt and placed it against the wall.

“Thank you,” I said, hiding a quiet breath of relief. “Is this all right with you?”

“It’s fine. I’m used to having it, is all.”

“Do you feel unsafe without a weapon?”

“No.”

He was pretty good at shutting down my lines of inquiry. Time to get official, then. I motioned him towards one of my couches as I sat on the other one and pulled out my notes. He hesitated, again.

“Please, make yourself comfortable,” I said as he continued to glare at my couch. It was a perfectly fine couch, in my opinion—I had really invested in these. “Or do you prefer to stand?”

After an intense glare-off against my poor couch, my client seemed to have gotten over whatever thought or memory it had sparked, and he sat down, slumping deep into the cushion. I bit down my desire to ask him about it.

“So, Mr Sakamura,” I started with instead. “Or would you rather I call you Shinju?”

“No,” he said immediately. “Neither of those.”

“What do you like to go by, then?”

He mulled it over. “Nothing.”

“That’s fine.” I jotted down some notes. I’d assumed he’d given a fake name for simple anonymity’s sake, but this seemed to go deeper than that. “May I ask what kind of help you were hoping to get from therapy?”

I’d pulled off yet another hard-hitter, apparently. He fell silent, this time for even longer. Both of our gazes slowly wandered towards the roof window and the grey clouds beyond it. My couches were strategically placed with that opportunity in mind. As this went on for a while, I let out a subtle cough to make sure my client hadn’t completely drifted off.

“I don’t think this is going to help,” he said, finally. That made me happy; it may seem odd but it’s a phrase I like hearing. Having the gall to say that out aloud means the client is being honest about their feelings, which can sometimes be the hardest hurdle to overcome.

“Why do you think that?”

“I’ve had therapy before. It did not end well.”

“The relationship between a therapist and a client can be tricky. It’s natural for it to not work out sometimes.”

He made a noise that could almost be described as a chortle, but without much humor.

“Not everyone is a good fit for each other. After my session with you, if you don’t think I’m a good fit either, I’ll refer you to someone else. How does that sound?”

“Fine.” He shrugged.

“Even though you don’t think this’ll work, you still came. That’s a commendable start. What got you to make that decision?”

“There’s this… I have a reason I need to get better.”

“And what is that?”

He tensed, seemingly struggling to make a decision. “I can’t say. But there’s something I need to take care of.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to subdue my curiosity. “I’m glad to hear that you have a source of motivation to improve, even if you’re not ready to share it quite yet.”

“I don’t know if it’s a good thing.”

“How come?”

“I can’t take care of anything. Not when I’m like this.”

“How would you describe ‘this’?”

“I have trouble with—” he grasped for the right word, “—functioning. It’s getting worse.”

This was as good of a segway as any into the question I'd been wanting to ask since I saw his arm. "May I ask if you use any drugs?"

He glared at me. Despite the intense eye contact, I found it almost impossible to identify the emotion behind it.

"This is strictly confidential, of course," I assured. "Any history of drug or alcohol use would be useful for me to know."

"No," he said, tone flat.

"No?"

"It's not useful knowledge."

"You have history, then."

"No," he repeated, more forceful this time.

We sat in silence for a moment. I was trying to wrap my head around why he'd bother with such a blatant lie. The track marks were plainly visible, with his arm stretched out on the armrest. My client noticed me looking, and tilted his arm away, but his eyes were still obstinately locked on mine. I relented, knowing better than to push too hard on the first consultation.

“Let’s talk about your problems, then. Would you be willing to share what’s bothering you?”

He hesitated, still, which I found stranger now than when we were talking about drug use. He must’ve expected to have to speak about this at least. For a moment I thought his attention had started wandering off, but then he muttered: “Sleeping troubles. Issues with… time.”

“Time?” Sleeping troubles I’d figured out just from the dark circles around his eyes, but this sounded unique.

“It’s gotten out of my control.”

“That’s the thing about time, isn’t it? Nobody can control it.”

“I used to be able to.”

“Do you mean you used to have a better sense of how time passes?”

He looks at the floor. “Yeah, something like that.”

“So, it’s only more recently you’ve been having problems with time perception?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I know what normal time perception is like.”

I frowned, considering how to answer. “It’s quite normal to feel like time sometimes moves faster or slower depending on what we’re doing or how we’re feeling. Losing track of a few hours here and there is part of being human.”

“Yeah, that’s not it.”

“Are you experiencing any memory lapses?”

“My memory’s fine. My recent memory, at least.”

“You had problems in the past?”

“I don’t have any memories earlier than a few years ago. But that’s not relevant.”

I usually try to avoid looking shocked at anything my clients tell me, but sometimes it was hard not to. “Are you sure that’s not relevant?”

“It was amnesia caused by a head injury. I’ve since come to terms with what happened. It doesn’t matter anymore.” I was trying to scan him for any traces of emotional response. Whether he really didn’t have any or had gotten exceptionally good at hiding, I honestly couldn’t tell. A psychologist isn’t supposed to be a mind reader, but sometimes we like to entertain the idea that we get pretty close. Not so much in this case.

“I might matter. An injury on that scale could very well be the root cause of—”

“It’s not. My memory’s fine, now. I remember too many things, if anything.”

“All right then. If you’re certain you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to. We can concentrate on your current issues.”

“That‘d be good.”

I recollected my thoughts. “You said you remember too many things? What do you mean by that?”

He shifted in the couch, uncomfortable. “Maybe that’s not the best way to put it. It just feels like it sometimes.”

“Do you mean you have difficulty forgetting?”

“No, I mean remembering too much. Multiple times. Remembering things before they happen.”

“Remembering the future? That sounds quite interesting.”

At that, my client’s face darkened and he started staring at the floor.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. What I’m trying to say is that it seems like this all comes back to what you mentioned about having an unusual sense of time.”

He looked back up at me. “Yeah.”

“How would you say it affects your day-to-day life?”

“It’s not good.”

“If you could please elaborate…”

“Like I said, I can’t take care of anything. I hadn’t realised how bad it had gotten until I… until recently.”

“It's making it difficult to keep track of your responsibilities?”

“It might be that, or might just be me, but yeah, I’m doing a piss-poor job.”

“Could you describe what the experience is like?”

He closed off once more, all focus gone. I didn’t like needling him like this. It had become abundantly clear that he found it difficult to give a concrete description of his condition, but I wasn’t sure how much I could possibly help him without understanding his symptoms.

“All right,” I sighed, “let’s approach this in a different way—”

“Time’s slowing and speeding,” he said, suddenly. “Randomly, without warning. Skipping out of sequence. Pausing on a single inescapable moment. It’s getting impossible to keep track of when I’m awake or asleep. Which ones are nightmares and which ones hallucinations, and when do they finally give way to reality. Sometimes it all just slows down to a crawl, and I get stuck inside my head with no idea how much time passes. Maybe it could go on forever, if nobody shakes me out of it.”

He breathed heavily after the outburst, then slowly settled deeper into the couch. I took a moment to consider how to respond. “Do you have someone to shake you out of it?”

“…Kinda. But it’s not right.”

“You don’t want this person to see you in that state?”

“She shouldn’t have to.”

“This person, is she—”

“Let’s not talk about her.”

“If you don’t want to,” I conceded. “Either way, considering your situation, you did well to get to this appointment on time.”

At that, he let out a sullen huff. “It wasn’t really thanks to me.”

“Would you like some tea?” I needed some time to think about everything he’d just said. His mention of hallucinations was concerning, but I probably shouldn’t fixate on it, when there was so much else to go over.

“If it’s herbal.” Moreover, his voice had gone a bit hoarse. He didn’t seem used to talking for this long at once.

“Chamomile?”

“Mmhm.”

I started boiling water in my little tea-making corner. “Your experiences with time… do they happen in episodes?”

“It used to be episodes.”

“And now?”

“It’s almost constant. Like a background buzz. Sometimes it grows, and engulfs everything.”

“Is it happening right at this moment?”

“…Yeah.”

I took out two cups, making sure to leave the chipped one for myself. “Occasionally, you fall quiet for a while. Is that because you get stuck inside your head, as you put it?”

“……Yeah.” He looked a bit embarrassed.

“Don’t worry about it. I can try to guide you out of it, if you want.”

I held his cup of chamomile out to him.

He took the cup and blew into it to cool it off. As he was raising it to his lips, however, he suddenly pulled back. He stared at the cup like it had threatened him.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Actually, I don’t want the tea,” he muttered, still staring.

“Did you remember something?”

“I don’t want the tea,” he repeated.

“That’s fine.“ I took the cup from him and placed it on the coffee table between us, and returned to my seat with just my own tea. “Feel free to drink it later you change your mind.” I tried to remember where we left off. “So, between back when this was more episodic, and now that it’s more constant, what changed?”

He finally took his eyes off the cup. “A lot. Now I don’t… I’m not…” He gave me a strange look, and despite my efforts, I really couldn’t decipher what he meant. “I wanted to get better. That’s why it got worse.“

“…Do you feel like you’re doomed to fail?”

He didn’t answer that.

“Look,” I started. ”I personally believe everyone has a potential to live a good life. But my beliefs don’t really matter—what is important is to make you feel that you have the capacity to get better. That it’s possible for you to get back in control. Over yourself, over your sense of time. You might need some help with making that happen, but that’s okay. That’s what therapy is for.”

I put down my empty mug, pausing to give him an opportunity to respond. He didn’t, but seemed to still be paying attention.

“As for how exactly we can get you on the road to feeling better, I do still think that you’d benefit from a proper evaluation. It would of course be your own choice, but considering your mention of hallucinations and past head trauma, my first suggestion would be to see a clinical psychiatrist to get you a medical assessment—”

“No,” he interrupted, quite sternly. “I know what the problem is, I just need to find a way to deal with it.”

“Even if the key to finding that way is to find out more about the source of the problem?”

“I’m not going to see a psychiatrist. I won’t take any medication, either.”

“All right.” At least his refusals were very clear. “So you’d prefer a more results-oriented approach with therapy.”

“I just want to function, that's all.”

“That’s a bleak way to put it, but sure, we can start with that.” I tapped my pen on my notebook. “We’re going need more time to talk things out and figure out the best way to help you, but if you wish to proceed, we can book you in for repeat sessions. Can you do weekly?”

“Yeah, I can do whenever.”

“Now, before it’s time to wrap up this one, I do want to ask, have you seen a psychiatrist before? Was that the therapy you mentioned?”

As a response he gave a nod so subtle I was hoping he’d elaborate, but he didn’t.

“Have you ever been prescribed any psychiatric medication?”

He didn’t reply for long enough to make me worried.

“Sir—” I started, lowering my voice, but he snapped back quicker than I expected.

“No, I haven’t," he spat. "You said my hour’s about to end, didn’t you? I’ll just go now.”

“No need to worry, I still have—”

“I've got a bad habit of losing track of time.” He straightened out of the couch before I could get another word in. “Can I pay in cash?”

“Yes, but the first consultation is free.” He looked puzzled, so I added: “I see no point in taking money from clients before both parties are sure that I can help them.”

“Right.” He was hovering near the door, as if he couldn’t quite decide whether he was going to storm off or not. It was rather awkward, so I got up as well.

“I’m sorry if I’ve prodded into things you’d rather not discuss,” I said sincerely. “I’d generally prefer not to leave a session on this note, but if you want to leave, I’m not going to stop you. Before you do, though, do you have any wishes as to how to proceed? If you don't want to try a second session, my offer for a referral to another therapist still stands.”

My client picked up the sword he’d relinquished at my request. He weighed it in his hand. “Same time next week?”

“Oh? Sure.” Honestly, I was a little surprised. “Next Thursday, one o’clock.”

He gave an affirmative grunt and slipped through the door.

“I look forward to seeing you,” I called out after him as he disappeared into the elevator.

Well. I had to admit it it wasn’t the worst first session I’d ever had with a client, but certainly not the most successful either.

As the sound of the elevator died down, I returned to the office to pour out the now cold tea and wash the cups. My client had only left a few minutes early, but I still had a while to go till my next one. I wrote up a couple more notes, mostly out of habit. In the end, I was just glad he’d decided to go ahead with the next appointment. With that man’s attitude, it seemed to be a minor miracle he was trying to find help in the first place, and I ought not to squander this chance for him.

I put down Shinju Sakamura in my planner for next week.


	2. Session 2

That weekend I spent an uncharacteristic amount of time mulling over my newest client. Typically I try to avoid overthinking individual cases on my off time, as I don’t consider it to be conductive to a good client-therapist relationship.

As much as I felt guilty about how the session had ended, I still stood by my gut feeling that if there was a medical cause to his symptoms, I wasn’t the right person to treat him—for one thing, as a psychologist I didn’t have a medical degree. I specialized in psychotherapy for trauma and depression, and while it was fine to work in a wider variety of fields, in some cases it was best practice to direct a client to someone better equipped.

But my client had refused. He’d made it clear that he didn’t want a diagnosis.

I tried to set my mind at ease by acknowledging the fact that there was no way to be sure if his symptoms were really as strange as they sounded; some sort of dyschronometria caused by that head injury or weird side-effect of the undiscussed drug use, or whatever other wild speculation I might conjure up. It could just be that he was experiencing dissociation and simply used unusual language to describe it.

Once Thursday rolled around, I’d made peace with the amount of work we could get done while relying on my usual areas of expertise. There would be time to return to the difficult questions once we’d established a solid baseline of trust between us.

That is, if the man was coming in at all. It was already forty past one, and I was done decorating my second shrine built out of torn sandwich wrapper pieces arranged around my table clock. I was about to give up and start a book instead, when my phone finally rang and the receptionist announced the arrival of my client.

“Please tell him he can come straight up to my office.”

I sweeped my wrapper paper art installation down into the bin. My pens and files were just about back to their usual places when my client pushed open the door. Without knocking, which I didn’t find particularly suprising.

“Good to see you,” I greeted, noting that he was still wearing that same robe and, to my displeasure, still had that sword hanging on his hip. “I’m glad that you managed to come. However, I have to insist that you don’t bring your sword to my office, next time.”

He looked down at the sword handle. “I forgot.” He made no mention of his lateness.

“That’s okay.” As he took it off, I moved from my desk to the couch and motioned him to join me. I glanced over the decorated scabbard leaning against the door frame. “Is it an antique?”

“Yeah,” he muttered, sitting down to his usual slouch.

“Why a sword? A city’s a city, but for self-defence reasons people usually carry something smaller. Pepper spray is what I have.”

“It’s not for self-defence. I just like it.”

“It doesn’t get you into trouble?”

“Nah. People think it’s a prop.”

“Because of how you dress?”

“Probably.”

“It’s certainly an unusual look.” I’d been wanting to ask about it, but didn’t want to make him feel self-conscious. It didn’t seem like he was, however. “Does it have any particular meaning behind it?”

He shrugged. “The sword came first. I figured I might as well lean into it.”

“Lean into what?”

“Y’know.” He made a languid gesture towards himself. It stuck out to me, as up to this point he’d moved his hands very little while talking. No little motions, barely any body language, mostly inscrutable expressions. “I watch a lot of movies.”

“Samurai films? What is it about them that appeals to you?”

“The action. They look cool.” His tone was always close to deadpan, so I couldn’t tell for certain if he was being flippant. Regardless, I doubted he was telling the full truth.

“And that’s the reason for your clothes? Aesthetic appeal?”

“Yeah, that.”

“You said the sword came first. Where from?”

“Dunno,” he muttered. He seemed to realize that I was going to ask him a follow-up question anyways, so he continued. “No, I really don’t know for sure. It felt right. Like a faint recollection, or something.”

“A recollection? From before your memory loss?”

“Yeah. I bought it soon after that.”

“In such a tough situation, you’d surely want to hold onto anything that gave you a sense of familiarity.”

“Maybe.” He looked at the floor, eyes darkening. A misstep, but where?

“If I say something that doesn’t sound right to you, please correct me.”

His brows furrowed into a frustrated frown. “No, you’re probably not wrong.”

“But?”

“But what do I know.”

“Even when it comes to yourself?”

He was eyeing me warily, like he was trying to come up with an answer that would keep me from bothering him further. “You may be right about the familiarity thing. I just hate that you said it.”

That was one of the more honest acknowledgements of his own emotions he’d given me thus far. It was progress, for sure.

“Hmm.“ I looked at my notes and considered what exactly I’d said. “Do you think it’s because I suggested how you might have felt?”

“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? To figure me out.” His voice was turning from a mutter to a low growl.

“Not really. I’m supposed to help you figure yourself out,” I clarified. “I might occasionally give you some thoughts on a matter for you to consider, but it is never my intent to dictate what you’re feeling. That’s poor practice, and I apologize.”

My client looked at me, really looked at me, as if he hadn’t truly done so before. There was a distrust in his eyes that concerned me.

“Your previous therapist, did they work in a different way?” I cautiously asked. I really didn’t like risking him taking off again, but this seemed important. Whatever urge had caused it last time, he seemed to swallow down now.

“…Yes,” he admitted.

“You don’t seem thrilled about it.”

“He had… opinions about what I should be feeling. Or not be capable of feeling. What my dreams mean, who I’m supposed to be.” He withdrew deeper into the couch. “But he was just… It wasn’t really his goal to… I didn’t… Fuck.” He suddenly looked a lot more tired.

“Does thinking about it make you feel like you’re about to get stuck in your head again?” If it was dissociation, I was getting ready to teach him some techniques to lessen its impact.

He blinked, and his gaze focused back onto me. “No, it’s gone already.”

“It’s gone?” There had barely been a pause in the conversation. Unless— “How much time do you feel like passed between you talking and me asking you a question?”

He shrugged. “A long time. But I know it’s wasn’t actually that long.”

“Do you think you could share what it was that you were reminiscing about before this happened? The last thing I want is for you to have to experience it again, but it would be helpful to find out what’s triggering it.”

“No, it’s not relevant.”

“If you’re worried, we can try a breathing exercise that will—”

“My shit therapist telling me what to do isn’t the cause of my problems. Besides, it was fair enough.”

I was going to argue a little further, but his last sentence bothered me. “It doesn’t sound fair to me.”

“I mean, I went along with it. After all, I’m the one who knows the least about what I’m supposed to be.” There was an angry edge to his words.

I raised my eyebrow. “Because of the amnesia?”

“That, and because I’m… not well.”

“Personally, I don’t see how either of those things should take away your right to decide for yourself who you are or what you feel.”

He shifted in his seat. “Sure, whatever.”

“Even if I say that, it would be understandable if you were having difficulties exercising that right.”

We sat quietly for a while. I was trying to keep an eye out for signs of him losing presence, although now I doubted my ability to catch it in time. Even then, I couldn’t just keep interrupting him during every lull.

“I think that’s the reason for the clothes,” he said, out of the blue. “Since you were asking.” He absent-mindedly rubbed the edge of his sleeve between his thumb and forefinger. “Making decisions, even if it’s some stupid impulse. I just wanted to have something for myself. An outfit, specifically. An identity I could put on.”

“You wanted to have an identity?” My thoughts went back to our introduction, when he’d refused to be called by any name.

“Maybe,” he evaded. “Either way, my therapist didn’t approve. He said I looked ridiculous,” he added with an hint of what could nearly be described as glee.

“What else have you done to try and find your identity?”

The momentary positivity quickly soured. “I’ve done some things.”

“You don’t seem happy about it.”

“No, I—” he huffed. “Why are we even talking about any of this?”

“Why are we talking about you, at your own therapy session?”

“I don’t see how this is helping my actual problem.”

“I’ve felt like this has been a very productive conversation.”

He looked unconvinced.

“The issue you wanted to solve,” I explained, “was a loss of control over your perception of time, right? Now I’m hearing you express that you also feel a lack of control over your identity and emotions.”

“I don’t think those are related.”

“It doesn’t matter if they don’t share a cause—it’s still my theory that if we can bolster your sense of control in your life overall, you might find that it gets easier to regulate the time issue, as well. Does that make sense?”

“That sounds like it’ll take a while,” he said sourly.

“Yes,” I confirmed. “It would be a long-term process, requiring some patience and commitment on your part.”

“I don’t have that kind of time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t have that kind of time,” he repeated, toneless.

“Do you feel like something bad is about to happen?”

“No.”

“…Have you ever been suicidal?”

“No. Just call me impatient, whatever. Tell me what I can do right now.”

I sat back, thinking. “I certainly agree that it’s necessary to find short-term solutions to help you take care of yourself. We could do that while also working towards overall stability. How does that sound to you?”

“Yeah, sure. So what do I do?”

“Let’s start by thinking of situations where you’ve felt like you were able to stay in the present moment. What usually helps you stay grounded?”

He considered. “Music. Watching movies, I guess.”

I nodded approvingly as I took my notes.

“Also…” He looked indecisive, as if swapping around what he was about to say, trying to figure out what sounded least bad. “A sort of adrenaline rush. Intense stress.”

“Stress?”

“Like… feeling as if it’s a life-or-death situation.”

Well, that wasn’t great. “Do you feel that way often?”

“It’s just something that helped me while I was working.”

“What kind of work is it that you do?”

“I don’t, anymore. Not that back then I was ever actually in any risk of dying, but if I could make my brain believe that I was…” His sentence tapered off. “Nevermind, forget about it. Like I said, it’s not something I do anymore.” He grimaced. “I don’t want to.”

“Yes, let’s cross out stress from the list. Your other options sound healthier.”

There was a flicker of emotion that crossed his face, but I didn’t quite catch whether it was shame or relief. He quickly shook it off.

“Then there’s…” he got indecisive again, but with much more gentleness this time. “That person I didn’t want to talk about. That, too.”

“Their presence keeps you grounded?”

“Yeah.”

“Would you be willing to talk about them, now?”

“No.”

“Well, either way, it’s good to hear that you have some beneficial social contact in your life. I think this is a great start,” I said. “As for when you have to be on your own, music seems promising. It’s a common aid for focusing.”

“It makes it so there’s less skipping. I sometimes put on a track to get proper groceries instead of zoning out and ending up with random junk.”

“Only sometimes? If it works, why not more often?”

“I’m not sure,” he confessed. “Doesn’t feel worth it.”

“Do you actually want to stay present?”

Once more we entered that lull in the conversation where he got uninclined to answer my question at all. Unfortunately for me, he was relieved from it by the sudden ringing of my phone.

“Sorry. That must be the next client on my schedule.” I scrambled over to the desk.

It was indeed the receptionist. After telling her to ask the new arrival to stay in the waiting area, I put down the receiver and turned back to my client. “You were quite late, so we’ve gone overtime to make up for it.”

“Oh.” At least he had the decency to look a little abashed. Although to me he seemed less apologetic, more bracing to be yelled at.

“Do you find it hard to get to places on time? You could try setting an alarm as a reminder,” I offered, trying to sound more helpful than guilt-tripping.

“I did set an alarm. I ignored it.” He avoided my eyes. “I didn’t want to come.”

“But you changed your mind.”

“Apparently.”

Pressured for time, I quickly scanned through my notes. “Wrapping up today’s session, for next week I would suggest you try out the music some more. Consider paying attention to how your sense of time changes. Or doesn’t change, if that’s how it goes. Do you like writing things down?”

“Not really.”

“We can figure that part out later, then. Now, sorry about rushing you out…”

He paid me with a crumpled lump of cash straight from his pocket. I accompanied him to the elevator since I had to go pick up my next client, anyways.

“What kind of music do you like?” I asked him as the elevator started its descent.

“Electronic.”

“Huh. I don’t know anything about electronic music.”

“I don’t know either, I just listen to it.”

And that was the end of that.


	3. Session 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My outline has solidified somewhat. It’s decided it won't fit into seven chapters.

The following Thursday I spent my lunch break going through what few notes I had on my temporally challenged client, trying to organize my approach for the upcoming session.

It was tough to get a clear read on him. The man was a jumble of odd behaviours and signs of trauma wrapped in a worrisome self-image. Despite what I’d told him about his repeating motif of loss of control, I wasn’t conviced that it was the full picture.

What I was assuming might be dissociative experiences, or flashbacks more likely, were clearly pointing towards trauma. It was odd, though. He had the same aversions to talking about the source of the trauma as a typical PTSD patient, but more strangely, he seemed completely uninterested in discussing it, time and again deeming it as irrelevant. I wasn’t sure if it was an avoidance technique or if he knew something he wasn’t telling me.

There was a lot he wasn’t telling me. I still didn’t even know the reason he’d originally approached his first therapist.

It had only been two sessions thus far. Yet his impatience, as he’d called it, was making me concerned about how willing he would be to talk things out properly. I had to commend the eagerness for results, but that wasn’t how this usually worked.

My musings were interrupted by the notably timely arrival of the client in question. Once he’d made his way up I saw that he didn’t have his sword with him, only an empty scabbard. It wasn’t a complete surprise—could’ve gone either way, honestly—but a pleasant development regardless.

“Afternoon,” I said as he strode through the room, mindfully placing the scabbard next to the couch before slumping down.

“What’s that for?” He shot a look at the old cassette player set between us on the coffee table. I’d gone out to borrow it from a friend, along with a few tapes. They hadn’t had a whole lot of electronic music in their collection, so I hoped my client wasn’t picky.

“I thought we could try a bit of background music,” I explained while fumbling to open the cassette compartment. “To see if it helps your state of mind during these sessions. How has your week been?”

“Average.”

“Well, that’s not bad.”

“No, it’s alright. Mostly I’m used to it getting worse.”

Having finally managed to pop in a tape, I pressed play. A quiet metallic groaning started spilling from the loudspeaker, gradually evolving before a few more sounds more akin to actual notes began layering upon it. The sound of the player was quiet and tinny—my friend hadn’t promised great quality.

“How’s that?” I asked.

My client listened for a while. “Experimental.”

“That’s not bad either, is it?”

“It’s alright,” he said, not quite making it into a joke, but not entirely denying the possibility.

“Anyhow, feel free to turn it off at any point, if you get enough of it.” I left the player on his side of the coffee table and settled back into my couch. “You said you’ve felt like your mental state has usually been on the decline? Do you mean your mood, or the frequency of your symptoms?”

“The symptoms, yeah.”

“Right. That brings us to what I wanted to discuss with you today. I know that last time you were growing quite weary of talking about your past, but there’s some questions I’d like to ask. They would help establish a reference point regarding these symptoms.” If I wanted to keep pestering him for information, I should at least be straightforward about my intentions. “Is that all right? I feel like this should be in line with your request to concentrate on finding a way to improve.”

“Fine,” he grumbled, sliding deeper into the couch. There was something about this subdued gesture of dissent that was almost humorous, coming from a grown man instead of some rebellious teenager. Then again, he did look very young, even if his perpetually tired face obfuscated it somewhat.

“Thank you.” I opened up my notes. “You mentioned last week that you used to work, but don’t anymore. Did I understand that right?”

“Sure.”

“How were you finding it back then, managing your responsibilities with your issues?”

“It was doable. Get up, go to therapy, go to work, get back home, repeat.”

“So you had a routine? Did that help you keep hold of your sense of time?”

“I guess. Everything beyond that was mostly a haze.”

“It doesn’t sound particularly happy.”

“It wasn’t. Still, it was kind of comforting, having at least that.”

“What happened to break that routine?”

“I quit the job.”

“Was it because of your symptoms?”

“No. I had a disagreement with my employers.” He was doing this thing again where his voice got deliberately dispassionate. “That’s when I quit therapy, too.”

“How do you feel about that, looking back?”

There was a crack in his stony expression. “I don’t—” he stopped, perhaps surprised by how pained he suddenly sounded. “I don’t know if it was right. But it felt like the only thing I could do.”

“May I ask, how long ago was this?”

“Some weeks, probably. Months, maybe. Definitely not a full year.”

“That’s…”

“Not very precise,” he filled in dourly. “I know. I had a bit of a rough time sorting stuff out afterwards.”

“It’s all right.” I rolled my pen between my fingers, thinking. “Overall, I’m getting the impression that even though your symptoms were managed well enough for you to hold a job, it was not a period in your life that you’d wish to return to.“

“Yeah,” he said, vaguely at first, but then again, fully resolute. “Yeah. Despite everything, I’m… better off, now.”

“So while your symptoms have gotten worse, has your mood gotten better?”

“Maybe. After getting away from… where I used to live.”

“Oh? Where was that?”

“New Mecca.”

“Ah.” New Mecca was about a day’s drive north-east, beyond the mountains. It had a reputation for being something of a challenging place to live in, unless you were rich. “How’re you finding it here?”

“It’s not all that different.” Then again, it had to be conceded that as reassuring as it was to look down your nose at your neighbors, my hometown wasn’t exempt from falling into many of the same pitfalls. “But it has less history for me.”

“Were you specifically looking for a clean slate?”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” he grumbled, eyes set on the roof window. The wind was strong today, and clouds sailed above us at noticeable speeds. “Looking to run away, more like.”

“They could be similar concepts, depending on your perspective.”

“When running away, there’s always something that can catch up to you.”

“And what is that, for you?”

I’d assumed this question would be hard for him to answer, but he replied soon enough. “The dreams.” He dropped his gaze from the window back at me. There was something about it that seemed like a challenge.

“Right, you mentioned having trouble sleeping. What do you—”

Abruptly, he got up on his feet, startling me enough that I dropped my pen. I thought he was going to pace around the room, but it seemed that he just didn’t want to be on the couch anymore, as he stopped once he got a few steps away.

“Are you okay?”

“You’re going to ask me what I dream about.”

It could be relevant. It’d be a lie to claim I wasn’t curious. I sighed. “You clearly don’t want to answer, so there isn’t any point in asking, is there.”

For a long while, he just stood there and glared at me. The music from the cassette player was currently meandering about in the realm of strange ambient noises accompanied by undulating synthetizers. It did a reasonable job of staving off the silence until the track ended. As the next one began, my client decided to sit down again.

I waited for him to be the first to speak.

“You don’t want to know,” he said finally, with put-on nonchalance.

I tilted my head. “No, what I want is not what you need to care about. But if you don’t want me to know, you can say so.”

“However you want to phrase it.”

“How about you? Do you not want to know why you have those dreams?”

“I already know why.” His breathing had gone shallow, but his tone was as carefully detached as ever. “They’re real, that’s why.”

“You don’t need to go into specifics, but may I ask, are they from your life at New Mecca?”

He thought for a moment before answering. “They used to be from a time before that. Now, sometimes.”

“The time before, is that the reason you originally went to see your previous therapist?” Expectedly, at the mention of him my client’s expression closed off. “I’m just trying to get the chronology straight,” I explained.

“Get the chronology straight,” he repeated. “Good for you.” That one was definitely a joke, even if he wasn’t particularly amused. “You could say that was the reason, sure.”

“Is there some source of confusion for you?”

“I just don’t remember choosing to go there, that’s all.” His tone contained an odd mixture of resentment and self-deprecation.

“Oh. The memory loss.” I pursed my lips. “I’m surprised your therapist didn’t help clarify this for you.”

He responded with a noncommittal grunt.

That was another matter from last week that I still was trying to figure out how to handle. The more I heard about my predecessor, the more irresponsible his approach sounded. My professional policy was to not overtly criticize my colleagues in front of a client, no matter what I personally thought of them. However, having to deal with the mess he’d left behind, I felt entitled to privately rag on him all I liked.

“Regardless, I must admit I have an interest in his methodology,” I said. “Don’t get me wrong—he was clearly a poor fit for you, so I have no intention of following his example. But if we could study your previous treatment, we might be able to consolidate what it was that worked for reducing your symptoms way back then. Only without the elements that made you feel worse, of course—“

I stopped. As I spoke, my client’s expression had grown colder and colder, into an unmistakable signal that I was going terribly wrong. For a moment I entertained the thought that I’d simply gone off for too long, or sounded too clinical—it was an off-putting habit according to many of my clients, a leftover from my days in academia. But that wasn’t it, was it.

“That’s not an option,” he said, and I was straining to detect anything in his tone that would give me a hint as to what he meant. “If you think that’s the only way to help me, you might as well give up.” He didn’t sound accusatory. Dejected, rather. Afraid.

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m simply trying to find more information to go on.”

“You’re wasting your time.”

I took a deep breath. “If wasting time was your concern, you would’ve told me everything a long time ago just to stop me from bothering you with all these questions. What is it that you’re really afraid of?”

“It’s not fear,” he muttered. “You think you can only solve my symptoms if you know what the cause is. But the cause is... unsolvable.”

“You worry I’d deem you incurable, somehow?”

He said nothing.

The room had grown uncomfortably quiet. It took me a moment to realize it was because the cassette player had reached the end of the tape at some point in the past few minutes. My client was looking at it with an unreadable expression.

Then, he leaned over to eject the tape, flip it over and slot it back in, all in one practiced motion. He pressed play and the B-side track kicked off with a slow percussion. We listened to the first track, but after that he spoke.

“It’s a drug,” he said, eyes still on the player. He rubbed at the crook of his left arm, a small mindless motion amidst stillness.

I set down my pen. “A drug is causing your symptoms?”

“Sort of.”

“What drug?” I asked as delicately as I could.

“Doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t know it.”

“Could you explain it to me, then?”

He deliberated for a minute, then another. I left him in peace, instead watching the clouds sail by above us, forms billowing and unfurling, until he started talking again.

“When I take it, time passes in a different way. Whatever way I want. I’m in control. Of everything. But when I don’t take it, all that goes away.”

“That’s when you start experiencing time skips?”

“At first. If I go without for longer, it gets… more and more intense. I start seeing things, dreaming more vividly, feeling like—” he swallowed, ”—feeling worse. Even longer, and time will keep slowing down, inevitably, until… I take another dose.”

“That sounds harrowing.”

He gave a small, indifferent shrug, but the look in his eyes was haunted.

“So when you had fewer symptoms, you were taking the drug?”

“Every day, back then.”

“Are you on it, now?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”

I paused for a moment before my next question to give us a breather. There was no putting it off much longer, however. “Are you trying to quit?”

“Of course I’m trying,” he said, a hint of frustration bubbling up. “I’ve got to.”

“But the intense withdrawal is making it difficult?”

“That’s about it.” He stared me down, returning to a confrontational stance. “Well, there you have it. The reason behind my symptoms. Are you satisfied?” The quiet bleakness underneath his words wasn’t lost on me.

I took a quick account of what I knew. One, my client was taking some sort of unknown psychedelic drug that gave its user a feeling of control over time itself, but also a debilitating withdrawal. Two, he had a pessimistic outlook towards his recovery. Three, it was highly unlikely he would agree to talk to an addiction psychiatrist.

Satisfied wasn’t quite the right word.

“I’m glad you’ve told me. What about you?”

“I’m glad we can stop talking about this, now that I’ve told you.”

“You don’t want to talk about it?”

“It’s pointless. I’m dealing with the drug on my own. All I want your help with is handling the withdrawal symptoms.“

“Why do you feel like you have to deal with it on your own?”

“I—” The question seemed to rattle him. “Stop. Just stop.”

I stopped. My client drooped down deeper into the couch.

“Very well,” I said quietly. “You’ve made your boundaries clear. What do you want to do, now?”

“I know it’s stupid, but…” he mumbled, nearly inaudible from his slouched down position. “Everything’s always revolved around the drug. I thought, if I could ignore it, find something else that worked… maybe I’d have a chance.”

“Finding relief other than the drug, that’s what would give you hope?”

The word was left hanging in the air. My client nodded, although the minute movement was barely visible.

“Do you mind if I tell you what I think?”

He shrugged. “Shoot.”

“I don’t think it’s stupid at all, not wanting to focus on the drug issue. The solution to addiction often isn’t as much about getting rid of the substance, as it is about improving one’s life to a point where the substance isn’t needed any longer. In your case, these withdrawal symptoms are a complication, but…” I paused to consider how to phrase this tactfully. “From what I’ve heard from you so far, it seems to me that your symptoms are accompanied by, or even intensified by something else that’s troubling your mind.”

“There’s plenty wrong with me,” he said flatly. “I’m aware.”

“No, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you. Rather, there may have been things that’ve happened to you that still have an effect on you. How you see yourself, maybe even how much autonomy you feel like you have. It doesn’t have anything to do with you as a person, or the drugs. It’s your brain’s natural reaction to past events.”

He didn’t respond, instead opting to stare down at the carpet. He was looking more worn out than ever, which made me wonder how much effort he was expending to keep his expressions as muted as they were, and whether he was aware that he was doing it.

“What I’m suggesting,” I continued, “is that this could be a way for us to make progress beyond the drug issue. You might find it easier to deal with it when there’s less weighing you down. At the very least, once the drug is out of your system, you’ll already have some tools ready for your return to a good, healthy life.”

I was waiting for him to either concur with me or tell me off, but it took him so long that the last track of the tape had ended and only empty air was playing.

“Do you agree with any of that?” I prompted eventually. “You should let me know if I’m saying something that doesn’t fit your experience.”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “A lot happened. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t something wrong with me.”

“That’s something we can explore and work on,” I gently rebutted.

He looked like he was about to disagree, but that’s when the tape in the cassette player reached its end, and the play button popped up with a click. My client raised his eyes. “That’s sixty minutes.”

“If you still have something to say, I don’t mind going a little overtime,” I assured. “We have a while before my next client.”

“No, it’s fine.” He straightened up, scabbard already in hand. “I’ll be back next week.”

“Oh. Okay,” I blurted, as he handed me another eclectic collection of notes, coins and pocket lint. “Take care.”

Without another word my client exited the office, and I was left alone to wonder whether this case was ever going to start getting more straightforward.


	4. Session 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week, I’d like to give special thanks to both commenters. I’ve never written multichapter fic before, let alone tried to stick to weekly updates, but you guys are giving this all the energy it needs to keep going!
> 
> This one grew to an awkward length and got cut into two sessions, so that’s one more chapter added to the total.

Torrents of late autumn rains swept over the city the following week. By Thursday noon it had turned into a veritable downpour that hammered at the roof and turned the ceiling window into a drumline. I laid down towels in all the usual spots, in case it got heavy enough to cause leakage. The rental agency had never been inclined to listen to my concerns about mold.

I’d ran out of towels when the receptionist let me know that my time-stuck client was coming up. He was late again, but only by a few minutes.

He entered the office slightly out of breath and drenched from head to toe, the hem of his robe dripping a wet trail behind him.

“Oh, just a moment,” I called out and ran to pick up one of the towels.

When I held it out to him he gave me a confused look, or as much of one I could see from underneath the soaked bangs that were plastered on his face.

“Dry your hair, at least. You’ll catch a cold otherwise.”

He took it with a grunt which I interpreted as a thanks.

I left him to it and sat down to set up the cassette player. It had kept him noticeably more present the previous week, so I’d borrowed it once more. “Are you up for some music, again?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Hold on.” He fumbled around his soggy pockets before pulling out a cassette tape. He wiped it over with the edge of the towel and handed it to me. “Here.”

“One of yours? Excellent.” I glanced it over. The shell was quite old and battered, and the label was a handwritten scribble. “LudoWic? I haven’t heard of them before.”

“I like the rhythm,” I heard him mutter from inside the towel.

I put the tape in. The sound of the rain thrumming against the window was so loud that I had to turn up the volume quite a bit for it not to get completely drowned out. “Awful rain, isn’t it? Sorry it gets so noisy here on the top floor.”

“Mmh.”

“It can be calming, though.”

“It’s nostalgic,” he said in a way that left it unclear whether that was a good thing or not.

He’d finished drying off—at least to a degree where he no longer looked like he’d taken a swim in the canals—and was tying his ponytail back up. I don’t know if it was the music or the warmth of the indoors after a chilly shower, but he looked a little less tense than usual as he settled into the couch.

“Did it rain a lot in New Mecca?”

“More than here. Are we really talking about the weather?”

I let out a little chuckle. “Fair enough, let’s not. Is there anything you would like to talk about?” I asked, hoping he might take the opportunity to find a more active role in our conversations.

“Not really,” he answered, almost mechanically.

“Nothing noteworthy going on this week?”

“It’s not noteworthy,” he said dryly. After what seemed like a short internal debate, he continued. “I messed up with time again.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. What happened?”

“I’ve been trying to keep track of the days of the week. To stop them from blurring together. And, y’know, to make it to these sessions. Turns out I can’t even do that much,” he said with poorly contained disgust.

“That’s a good idea, though. What turned out to be the problem?”

“Tuesday just kept going.”

“Kept going?”

“I thought it would have to end at some point. But it got slower and slower, and then it was today.”

“Do you remember what started it?”

“Nothing started it. It just happens.”

“It wasn’t preceded by any kind of familiar trigger?”

“Dunno. The order of events gets messed up.”

“Okay then, let’s examine this some other way. When you say it got slower, what does that feel like?”

“Everything outside me halts.” He kept his gaze blank and fixed at the floor. “There’s nothing to keep my mind from… getting unpleasant.”

“Your mind is racing so fast, it feels like the outside world stops moving?”

“I guess that’s how it works, yeah.” He said, then glanced over at the cassette player. “I tried to play music, but the space between the notes grew too long.”

“Hm. So that’s unreliable as a distraction.” I tapped my pen, dissatisfied. “Have you ever tried any breathing exercises?”

“I doubt that’d work. Every breath takes an eternity.”

“Ah. I see.” I was trying to wrack my brain for more ideas to offer, but only a feeling of being out of my depth returned. “Still, you did get out of it, finally?”

His face turned glum. “I took another dose.“

“Of the drug?”

“A small one. I’m keeping it small,” he insisted, more to himself than to me.

“But enough to stop it?”

“I think I passed out. There must’ve been things that happened before I had to run here, but not much of it makes sense.”

“Isn’t there anything between then and now that you can remember clearly?”

He considered. “Going for a walk.”

“A walk? Was there something special about it?”

“It was nice.” His expression lightened somewhat.

“That’s kind of surprising, what with the weather this week.”

“I don’t mind it. There’s fewer people on the streets.”

“Do you feel nervous around people?”

“No. I just prefer to avoid them.” The way he said it was oddly harsh. He quickly moved on. “Anyways, we didn’t go far, just wandered around the neighborhood.”

“…We? You were with someone?”

The lightness in his face went back into hiding. “Maybe.”

We stared each other down. The music track that was currently playing, with its tense synth bassline, added a comical layer of intensity to the affair. To my surprise, my client relented first. He sighed and looked away.

I sighed as well. “Look, I have no idea what the reasoning behind it is, but you clearly have some sort of problem with discussing people you know. Do you want to explain that to me?”

“I really don’t know that many people.”

“You’ve yet to make new connections since moving?”

“Like I said, I prefer to avoid them.”

“What about your walking companion? I’m assuming they’re the same person you were talking about in our earlier sessions. The one who helps you stay present?”

“Why do you need to know about her?”

“I don’t, if that’s how you prefer it. But I do find it curious how intently you want to avoid me knowing, even though she’s clearly a positive influence in your life.”

“She’s… that’s not something I’m supposed to have.”

“What?” I frowned. “Positive influences?”

“No, I mean—” He was having trouble finding the words. Or perhaps, finding out what he meant in the first place. “You keep saying that it’s a positive thing. Talking as if I should get involved with people.”

“You disagree?”

“Most would.”

“How come?”

“Because I’m like this,” he said with the conviction of someone who’d just presented an indisputable argument.

“I’m sorry, I don’t see what you mean.”

“I’m a bad person, all right?” he exclaimed, voice raised in a sudden outburst. For a second, he looked startled at himself. He started again, quieter, tone reaching for matter-of-factness but falling on the side of melancholy. “You don’t understand. It’s for other people’s sake and mine.”

There was something strange about his phrasing. “Did someone tell you that?”

He flinched. “…My psychiatrist.”

I felt a sudden urge to strangle something. “That’s not a well thought-out thing for him to say.” Could that man really have been this incompetent, or had he been purposefully trying to isolate my client? “Did he actually recommend you to not talk to people?”

“I didn’t really listen to him, honestly. But he did have a point,” he argued almost grudgingly. “It’s selfish.”

We were interrupted by a click from the cassette player to signal the end of the A-side of my client’s tape. Immediately he reached for the eject button and turned the tape around.

“We could have a long discussion about whether you are a bad person or not,” I said once the music joined the sound of raindrops once more. “But first I’d like to acknowledge the fact that despite what you believe about yourself, despite what you were told, you still did get close to at least one person, with whom you’re now enjoying rainy day strolls together. What do you think of that?”

“The girl…” he started uncertainly, then turned resolute. “Her, I’ve got to take care of. She’s got nobody else.”

“She’s a child?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re her sole guardian?”

“…Yeah. Her family’s gone.”

Well, there was yet another unanticipated revelation. “Without support structures, raising a child is a challenge for anyone.”

He didn’t say anything to that, just looked grim. I felt a little resentful towards my duty to find out more about the state of this girl’s home life. He’d already been so hesitant to share this information, the last thing I wanted to do was to scare him into thinking I’d call child services on him. However, when kids were involved with drug cases, I had my obligations.

“How would you say you’re managing? With your… occasional unavailability, and all.”

“She’s pretty independent,” he said half proud, half somber. “I keep the flat stocked with non-perishables, in case I mess up. Still, she likes it much better when we cook together.”

“Do you like to cook?”

“She likes it, and I like that.” He watched the steady rivulets of water cascading down the roof window. “She likes the rain, too,” he added, unprompted.

“That’s why you were out this week?”

“Yeah. She’d jump into puddles, yelling about how she’s a sea monster.”

“She sounds like a good kid.”

“She is.”

“Has she ever mentioned how she feels about your episodes?”

“She’s—“ He stammered. “I don’t know why, but… despite everything, she’s never been scared of it. Of me. She just bothers me till I’m out of it. Makes some joke.” He paused for a long time, and when he spoke again the fondness that had colored his voice had turned into guilt. “But she shouldn’t have to do that. And she shouldn’t have to be the one to remind the only adult in her life when it’s fucking Thursday and time for his fucking therapy session.”

“I can understand why you wouldn’t want that.”

“No shit.” He let out a deep exhale, as if trying to push out his rising emotions along with the air. “I know I’m doing a bad job. That’s the reason I’m here. She deserves better.”

“It’s a strong motivation to improve.” I eyed over my notes and considered where to go from there. Difficult as the situation was, to my relief I didn’t suspect an actual case of child neglect. Rather, it seemed to me like this girl was possibly the only thing in my client’s life that he made an effort for. “We can work with this.”

The subtle tension that had been building up in him uncoiled. It really seemed like he’d been expecting the revelation that he had a kid to go poorly. “You have a suggestion?”

“Yes, and a practical one at that,” I said. “Last week, we briefly touched upon the idea that your sense of time was helped somewhat by the routine created by your job. What I’d like to propose is the creation of a new routine.”

“You don’t think I’ve tried?” he asked wearily.

“I imagine you would’ve, and I know it’s hard. That’s why I’d like to propose a quite focused approach. Instead of fruitlessly tracking weekdays or filling a timetable with tasks you might drift out of, we could center it around you spending time with the girl, instead. Going out, cooking, whatever you two enjoy doing.”

“That’s it?”

“It may sound like a silly exercise to put such casual matters on a fixed schedule, or even setting up alarms for them,” I acknowledged. “The point is to see if having something to genuinely look forward to helps you keep time from slowing. Even if you do lose track of it, it’ll only be until the next scheduled event. Basically, we want to arrange these moments where you’re focusing on the present so that they might interrupt the mental spiral that ends in you needing the drug. As a bonus, you’ll have another person join in to hold you accountable, which is a proven technique for improving focus.”

“…Okay.”

The impassive look on his face that I’d grown accustomed to veered enough towards curiosity that I considered this worth a try. We spent the next fifteen minutes or so putting together a list of items for my client’s new schedule. Movie night and dedicated play hour joined the list, as did a weekly laundromat trip with drawing supplies to pass the time. Once there was enough for a solid but not overwhelming start, I tore the page out of my notebook and handed it over to my client to be brought home and approved by the girl.

He took the list, but instead of stowing it away he kept staring at it with an indecipherable expression.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,“ he said, tearing his eyes off the piece of paper. “It’s just weird.”

“The schedule is?”

“No, it’s… it’s seeing these things in one place. Weird to think that this is what I do, these days.”

“Good kind of weird?”

“Yeah. Unexpected.” He folded the paper and, with remarkable gentleness, put it in his pocket. “It’s so… mundane.” The way he said the word was soft.

“Domestic?” I offered.

He nodded. “Doesn’t suit me, does it.”

“You never imagined yourself as someone able to enjoy domesticity?”

“I don’t think anyone would’ve imagined it.”

“Is that the same as when you were told that you shouldn’t talk to people?”

He didn’t reply, but he didn’t really have to.

“Well, look at you now. Evidently, you’re full of surprises.”

Glancing at the clock I gathered that our time was about to run out, so I didn’t press the topic. Sure enough, the music soon faded out.

My client popped the tape out of the player and placed it in his pocket, careful not to crumple the paper with the schedule. The rain still hadn’t relented, so I gave him a plastic binder sheet to protect them from moisture. Honestly, I wished I could rather offer him an umbrella, but I didn’t have one.

“Good luck with the schedule,” I said once he was at the door, empty scabbard back on his belt.

“I’ll try.”

There was an unprecedented vivacity to his voice that left me feeling optimistic as he closed the door behind him.

We still had a lot of difficult work ahead of us, but perhaps a little positivity and constructive homework were what my client needed most at this point. He was already opening up a lot. Whatever secrets he still had left, we’d be equipped to tackle.

I noticed the roof had started to leak. The waterdrops pooled lazily into a wrinkle in the wallpaper, from where they dripped down into the carpet. It was a new spot, unguarded by any of my towels. Dismayed, I went to move them, hoping the floor wasn’t about to take damage.


	5. Session 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick note: Due to the fact that I can’t even begin to guess how his storyline will resolve in canon, I’m purposefully avoiding mentions of Fifteen. It’s probably unlikely that his and Zero’s paths wouldn’t cross again, but that's how I'm simplifying it for the sake of this fic. Just in case anyone's wondering.

The steady advance of fall into early winter continued. As the temperatures dropped and the thick clouds blanketing the city showed no signs of moving elsewhere, my job got busier with the habitual dip in the mood of my most seasonally affected clients.

Thursday was a particularly cold day. The report I was listening to—once I’d figured out how to use the radio that came with my borrowed cassette player—claimed that in the countryside the intermittent rain was already turning into snow. Here in the steady glow of the city it became sleet before it even touched the ground, and accumulated in slushy gray mounds on the sides of the streets. They made me think of my time-adrift client’s daughter; she was probably having a great time jumping onto those piles and splashing the sleet in every direction.

The client himself turned up early, before I’d even finished my lunch. I told the receptionist I’d pick him up from the waiting room, then hastily devoured the rest of my sandwich, wiped the crumbs off my unfinished paperwork and headed downstairs.

He was alone in the room, slouched in the usual chair, head drooped, leaning against his empty scabbard. It looked like he may have dozed off, so I cleared my throat. Groggily, he raised his head.

I couldn’t help but notice that the bags underneath his eyes were more pronounced than usual. As an acknowledgement of the weather, he was for the first time wearing both sleeves of his robe, but unsurprisingly that wasn’t enough to keep him from shivering. Even then, he greeted me with a nod that was quite possibly the cheeriest gesture he’d ever given.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he said, disinterested, stepping past me into the elevator. From close by, his shivering was even more apparent.

“Don’t you have any other shoes?”

“Nah.”

Realizing this wasn’t going to go anywhere, I pressed the top floor button and contended with a quiet ride up.

“I saw a cat on the way here,” he said unexpectedly once the elevator was moving. No further comment. From anyone else it would’ve been a trivial remark, but coming from him, it was strangely reassuring.

I nodded. “There are a lot of cats around the area. You can often spot them hunting underneath the bridges.”

He didn’t follow up with anything, but seemed content enough.

Upon entering the office, he flopped straight onto the couch and, awkwardly with his still trembling fingers, began fiddling with the cassette player. Meanwhile, I went to check if the radiator could be turned any higher. The draft from the roof window was one of the room’s definite downsides.

A new beat started playing from the shoddy speakers, and I joined him at the couches.

“So, any success with the schedule?” I started off.

My words jostled him back from the music he’d started drifting off to. “I think so.”

“You think so?”

“The girl’s been enjoying it,” he said, focus returning. Despite the signs of fatigue, he seemed to be in a remarkably good mood.

“You’ve managed to do more together?”

“Yeah. Yesterday we made noodles. Not just instant ramen, but with vegetables in it and everything.” Through the dryness with which he spoke, a hint of pride shimmered.

“Sounds delicious, honestly.”

He shrugged. It was a small, self-effacing gesture that I kind of wanted to comment on, but decided to focus on the positives.

“Anything else you enjoyed this week? Did you go somewhere?”

“A playground. She’d found it while we were exploring last week.”

“That’s handy to have near your home. Were there other children around?”

“Yeah. A bunch of them came to talk to me, actually.” He reflected on the memory for a moment. “They liked the costume.”

I smiled. “I can imagine.”

“The parents hated that. Got a lot of suspicious looks.”

“Do you mind it?”

“Not really.”

“You’re not considering a change in clothes?” I said, half-jokingly, but also hoping he might take the hint to stop disregarding the weather.

“Some day, maybe.”

Foiled once more, I frowned. “Can I ask, do you have a winter coat for the girl, at least?”

He picked up on what I was trying not to insinuate, and glared me down. “We bought one a few weeks ago.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply anything by that. I just needed to make sure."

"I get it."

I felt a pang of guilt over his self-disdaining tone. "Your financial situation is probably all right, then?”

“I have some savings left from my old job,” he said, not in an entirely comfortable tone. “But…” His face went through a series of elusive expressions, like there was something he was about to leave unsaid before convincing himself that it’d be okay to mention. “I may have found some part-time work, last weekend.”

“Oh, really? That’s fantastic,” I said, genuinely impressed, both by the news and his talkativeness. “What sort?”

“There’s this video rental shop near our place. The old lady who runs it can’t lift the heavy boxes, anymore.”

“Is that where you go for your movies?”

“Cartoons mostly, these days,” he amended. “The girl prefers them. But I did get something for myself, last time. _The Outlaw Samurai_.”

“Enjoy it?”

“Sort of. I never used to watch the post-war stuff.”

“What’s the difference? I don’t know anything about the genre.”

“Different themes,” he explained. He kept his voice unaffected as always, but a glint of nerdy enthusiasm lit up in his eyes. “The later style has a darker tone, and the archetype of the protagonist changed a lot, favoring more flawed characters.”

“So that’s not what you prefer?”

“I used to find it hard to watch. It made me… self-conscious.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes you just want to watch a film and not think too much, you know? Just enjoy a bunch of warriors fighting for what they know is right, straightforward codes of honor, that sort of thing.”

“But this time, you picked the other style.”

“I’ve been giving them another try,” he said coolly. “Got bored of the old ones.”

“Do you still feel self-conscious?”

He shrugged, clearly disinterested in continuing the conversation further.

“All in all, it sounds like you’ve been having a very successful week,” I stated, backing off. “How about the time skipping?”

His expression, opened up by the casual talk of playgrounds and movies, closed off once more.

“It’s better,” he said, laying on the confidence a little too thick. I was so used to him hiding things from me, it was odd watching him try to hide it from what I could only assume was himself. At the sight of my concerned face, he appended: “Still happens.”

“We can hardly expect for your symptoms to simply vanish. But even a small amount of progress is progress.”

He didn’t look pleased, and I couldn’t tell what that was about. He really did seem to be doing well, yet the same impatience remained.

“How disruptive are the symptoms?” I asked. “You do look a bit tired, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“I’ve been sleeping less, that’s all.”

“Have the nightmares gotten worse?”

His silence was an answer in itself.

“I understand that you want this to work. But if it’s not—”

“No, I just… It was going well. I thought it’d be all right.” He sighed, and his whole body seemed to deflate. “I’ve been trying to cut down my dose.”

“Drastically?”

“To a few drops.” Even though I didn’t know what his usual dosage was, the severity in which he spoke was revealing.

“Rapid improvement can be tempting. But maybe you should take it slower, if you’re having a rough time.”

“No,” he insisted with a stubbornness that was fervent enough to be discomforting. “It has got to work, by now.”

“Why is that?”

“…There isn’t that much left.”

“Of the drug?”

He breathed in and out, as if preparing to face what he had to say. “What I have is all there is. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”

“Huh,” I said, unprepared. “So that’s your deadline, so to speak.”

Something about my choice of word got a bleak snort out of my client. “That’s about it.”

“You’ve been trying to wean yourself off early to avoid the worst brunt of quitting cold turkey, then?”

“You could say that,” he muttered.

“It’s a solid plan,” I commended, a little taken aback by his increasing sullenness. “Looking on the bright side, do you think there’s some comfort in knowing that at some point in the future, you’ll be off it for sure?”

“Shut up.” It was certainly not the reaction I’d expected, least of all the buried hint of despondence that I was met with when he looked me in the eye. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Clearly not,” I had to admit. “Is there something you’d like me to know?”

“Fine,” he said, carefully working his expression back towards passiveness. “The withdrawal’s fatal.”

“…What?”

“I told you that time slows down when I’m running low. That’s how the last stage of withdrawal works. Time keeps slowing, until it stops. And then I’ll be dead.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn’t think of anything at all.

“Worse than dead, really,” he continued in his forcefully detached tone, not minding my lack of response. It was as if once he’d breached the dam on this topic, the words kept pouring out. “My organs will fail, but with my stopped time perception, I’ll be stuck there forever. In that moment.” The slightest hint of fear seeped through his veneer, but he quickly discarded it in favor of frustration. “The loop is always the same. I take the dose, promising it’ll be the last one. I get through the withdrawal. It gets worse until it becomes clear what the next step will be, and that’s when I chicken out. Unless something goes differently, unless I can actually keep time from slowing… I know how it ends.”

“I… see,” I said simply, while trying to come up with a better way to respond. He likely wasn’t looking for platitudes. “How do you know? That you’ll die, that is.”

“I found out about it. Everyone else died, once they ran out.”

“Everyone else?”

“Who took the drug. My psychiatrist told me.”

“He knew about this?”

“He gave me the drug.”

“What?” I exclaimed again, dumbly. “Why on earth would he give you something like that?”

Grimacing, he looked away. I followed his line of sight to the cassette player, and only then I noticed that the tape had run out, probably a good while ago.

We both sat there in the resulting silence, until he dutifully reached out and flipped the tape. The track that started playing was a slow melody, a little too contemplative for how rattled this new direction of the discussion was making me. My client on the other hand was markedly calm, although with an air of resignation.

“He wasn’t really my therapist,” he said, slowly, like he was assessing how it felt like to admit it out loud. “I wasn’t really his patient. I was a… failed experiment.” The words he picked didn’t seem to quite satisfy him, but he pressed on. “His job was to keep me in check.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand,” I managed to say. “You mean the drug was experimental?”

“…It’s a long story.”

“Is it a story you can share?” I asked, trying to veer my tone back towards some semblance of professionalism.

“I don’t know,” he said truthfully. “I don’t remember any of it myself, beyond glimpses. It’s taken some effort to… piece it together from outside sources.”

“That’s okay.”

He let out a long sigh and leaned deep into the couch. For a split second I had the odd thought that he was about to fall asleep, but his eyes stayed open, dull as they were.

“The drug, it was for the war.”

It took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about. “The Cromag War?”

“Yeah. New Mecca needed better weapons, so they gave a bunch of people a mind-augmenting drug.”

“Mind-augmenting…?”

“The ability to slow down time, to run a thousand potential scenarios through your mind in the fraction of a second… It’s precognition, basically. Pretty useful in combat.”

“So you’re saying that you—” I stammered as I tried to wrap my head around this story that had taken a sudden turn into science fiction. “Hold on. The fighting ended, what, over seven years ago? How old are you?”

He’d been remarkably matter-of-fact up to this point, but now he looked a little uncomfortable. “They needed kids for the program.”

“New Mecca was using _child soldiers_?”

He shrugged, not knowing how else to answer.

“In the end you… were let go?”

“I was one of the last ones left alive. I stole what remained of the drug and ran.”

He was studying my reactions like I’d been studying his. I couldn’t tell what he saw. “Do you mind if I take a moment to think about this?” I asked.

“Go ahead,” he replied flatly.

He tuned into the music, I into my spinning thoughts. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to take his story at face value. In this banal space of a run-down therapist’s office, this talk of secret government supersoldiers sounded out of place, absurd. Diagnostically, it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume my client had formed delusions as a coping mechanism.

However, from what I remembered seeing in the news during the Cromag War, and the global criticism New Mecca had received for it, it had been a horrid affair. If he had been there, the experience would certainly be a solid candidate for the source of his trauma that we’d yet to establish. Then there was his crisis of identity and autonomy, and how those could be linked to growing up as part of some military experiment…

I studied the man sitting on my couch, motionless apart from the occasional shiver from the chill that still clung onto him, his tired eyes locked into some unknown point in the distance. He didn’t seem to care how strange his narrative sounded.

In the end, I decided that it didn’t matter all that much whether it was strange or not. As a therapist, my approach would still have to be the same: understanding and dependable.

“It’s cold, isn’t it?” I said in the next lull between the music tracks. “I’m going to make some tea. You don’t have to drink it, but it’ll warm your hands if you hold it.”

He didn’t say anything, but I felt his eyes following me as I went up to the kettle.

“I noticed you maintain quite a stoic attitude as you discuss this subject,” I said while picking out a teabag. “How do you feel, talking about it?”

“Dunno. Like I said, I don’t even remember it. Makes it hard to feel much.”

“What about on a theoretical level? This story of a kid made part of a drug experiment and put into combat. Does that evoke a feeling?”

He waited until the boiling of the tea kettle quieted down. “Other… other people like me, they were angry.”

“And you?”

“I get what they mean. It was messed up.”

“But you’re not angry yourself?”

“Not like they were. I don’t… I don’t think I feel anything.” There was a subtle crack in his voice, right at the end.

“What about just now? What kind of feeling was that?”

“I know I’m supposed to feel something. It’s inhuman not to. But I just don’t.”

“You believe that makes you inhuman?”

He didn’t respond.

I brought him his tea mug and tried to make sure that he managed to grab it without spilling. His hands were ice cold. He flinched at the touch, but took the cup and wrapped his fingers around the warm ceramic.

“Truth is,” I said once I’d returned to my seat, “there are a lot of reasons why a person would have trouble with feelings after a traumatic event. It’s a perfectly human response.”

“There was no traumatic event,” he muttered almost spitefully. “If I don’t remember anything, how can it affect me? I’ve always been… defective. That’s why I was picked for the program in the first place.”

“You mean when you were a child? If you don’t remember, how do you know that?”

“My psychiatrist told me. They wanted me because of my… psychopathy.”

“Your psychiatrist told you that you’re a psychopath?” I repeated, stunned. “Oh, fuck him.”

My sudden profanity took my client by surprise. It took me as well, honestly, but I stood by it.

“It’s still not fully clear to me what went on between you two,” I clarified. “But it has gotten increasingly evident that he did not have your best interests in mind. You seem to know it, too. Whatever he had to say about you, we should treat with skepticism.”

“Maybe. He still knew more about me than you do.” The torn expression on his face stung me a little. I’d seen it before, in clients who had left abusive relationships and found their effects lingering for a long time, despite understanding them as mistruths on a rational level.

“About how you’re… ‘defective’?”

“About a lot of things.”

“All right. Let’s consider this,” I said, concentrating to keep my voice even. “Can I ask you something that may sound a little harsh?”

“…Go ahead.”

“Do you feel like, because of your ‘defectiveness’, you on some level deserved what happened to you?”

He stared at me, and his breathing got shallower. “Are you claiming I don’t? You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“I’m not talking about what may have happened during the war. I’m talking about the young kid who got dragged into it.”

“You want me to feel sorry for myself, is that it?” he snarled. “Well, I don’t.”

“No, I don’t want you to do anything. I just find it worth noting that, even though you think your failure to feel sorry or angry for your own sake indicates a lack of emotions, it’s actually quite natural not to feel much towards someone you hold in such low regard.”

He could no longer bear to look me in the eye. “What does that make me, then?”

“Not a psychopath, for one. Belief that you deserve bad things to happen to you, shame over your emotional response or lack thereof… Hardly fits the diagnostic criteria. Let me be explicit: Not once during our conversations have I thought your problem is psychopathy. Rather, I think that’s a misdiagnosis so thoroughly unhelpful that I find it almost malicious.”

“You think I’m a normal person.” While his tone was flat, there was a slight edge to it, like he found the statement humorous.

“What I think is that this narrative of there being something fundamentally wrong with you isn’t healthy. But that’s my opinion,” I added. “I’d much prefer to hear yours.”

He went quiet for a long time. In the end, he met my eyes once more. “It wasn’t just my psychiatrist. You don’t know the truth about me. Nobody who does would see me that way.”

“How do people see you?”

It looked like he had an answer to that, but couldn’t bring himself to say it. Instead, his expression glazed over with a reluctant reminiscence. “I once met a man who—“ he swallowed, faltering in finding a suitable turn of phrase, ”—who wasn’t a good person. He did cruel things and delighted in it. And he… really liked me.”

“Being liked by a bad person doesn’t make you bad.”

“You don’t understand. He saw me as worse than him, and that’s what he admired.” His disgust was palpable. “He wasn’t wrong.”

“Are you saying it’s because you’ve done cruel things, as well?”

He went quiet, then nodded.

“Do you want to do cruel things, now?”

“…No.”

“Don’t you suppose that might be an important distinction to make?”

“I’m not sure it matters,” he muttered with some difficulty, although that could’ve been because his voice had gotten increasingly raspy with the unprecedented amout of talking. He coughed in an attempt to regain control of it, then looked down at the mug in his hands. Cautiously, he took a small sip.

“That must’ve cooled off by now,” I noted. “Would you like me to make you a new one?”

“No, it’s fine.”

I held off on making further comments so he could drink the lukewarm tea in peace.

“I got poisoning from tea, one time,” he said vacantly once he was about halfway through, still sounding gruff, but better.

“Ah, I suppose that’d make you lose taste for it.”

“It just keeps reminding me of something that happened that…” He wavered, unsure about what he’d wanted to express. “It’s a bit blurry,” he mumbled, and I wondered if he was actually going somewhere with this or if he’d mentioned it just to move the conversation away from its previous direction. “You asked me if I’d ever been suicidal,” he finally said.

“Yes, I remember.”

“I was once told I had a chance to die. Normally. Without fear that I’d get stuck.” He stared up at the roof window, even though there was nothing to be seen there besides the gray layer of sleet covering the glass. “They said everyone would be better off with me dead. I’d be, too.”

“Who’s they?” I asked, unsettled but trying not to show it.

“These men with—” he started saying, but stopped. “…It’s complicated. Maybe it was just me.”

“I see.” I didn’t, really, but that wasn’t the point, was it. “Do you feel that way, now?”

“After everything that’s happened, I don’t think I’m allowed to make any claims.”

“After everything,” I repeated pensively. “It really is hard to leave your past behind you, isn’t it?”

“I want to leave it.” His words were getting quieter and quieter—I hoped his throat wasn’t about to give up on him completely. “I want to live, just the way we wrote on that schedule. Take care of the girl, feel like I’m doing something good. But when time slows down and I’m left with nothing but myself, that’s not what’s there.”

There was a long pause, while I chose my next words carefully.

“I’m sure you’ve noticed that we keep returning to how your sense of self aggravates your situation,” I pointed out. “Honestly, without any context, it’s getting difficult to discuss this with clarity. I’d never push you to give more details than you’re comfortable with, but I have to wonder if you’d find some relief in airing out what exactly is bothering you.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said, little louder than a whisper.

“I’m only asking if you have something you'd like to tell me.”

He was silent for a long time. I let him think, but suddenly he tensed, and in a moment all focus in his eyes was lost. Worried he was getting stuck in an episode, I was about to interrupt him, but he recovered as quickly as he’d gone.

“Telling you won’t go well,” he stated.

“What do you fear will happen?”

He didn’t reply, just sat there gazing into what was left of his tea until the final beats of the crackling bassline that had been accompanying us died down and the cassette player made its usual snap to indicate that our time was over.

“You see me as a good person,” he said as if it were a ridiculous notion. “Just like the girl.”

“Is that what you want to be?”

He was done, however; he only gave a dismissive shrug and leaned over to eject the tape.

“We should return to this subject when you’re ready,” I concluded, diplomatic but firm. “For now, take care of yourself, won’t you?”

“Fine,” he said simply.

I watched him get up from the couch. He looked exhausted, but as he picked up his scabbard, the grip was firm. I got up as well to receive my fee, which this time included a couple notes that weren’t completely crumpled, perhaps from his new job.

“Before you go, may I ask something?” I hesitated a little, knowing he wouldn’t want me to intrude, but my concern won out. “How much of the drug do you still have?” Immediately his expression turned apprehensive, so I clarified: “If the withdrawal will put your health at risk, it might be safer to check in with a doctor. Even if they can’t help with the drug directly, it could—”

“I’m handling it,” he interrupted. “There’s still some left.”

”Enough to keep lowering it gradually?”

“Yeah,” he said offhandedly as he took his leave.

“Don’t push it too hard, all right?”

Hand on the doorknob, he stopped, and turned to look at me. “I… I really do want to get better.”

It was difficult to determine his tone through the still remaining hoarseness. Was it determined? Desperate? Was he referring to his symptoms or himself?

“You will,” I replied.

“You can’t promise that. But… I’ll try.”

With those same parting words as last time, he left. As the door shut behind him, I sagged back down on my couch.

Never in my career had I been this unsure about whether I’d done the right thing. His statement that he might die from the withdrawal had left me shaken. Was it really fine to leave him to take care of it himself, or was it my duty to make him get help whether he wanted it or not? I didn’t want to break the trust he’d so reticently given me, but I didn’t know how much time we had left before his life might be at risk.

The other problem with finding external help was that, for all I knew, he’d left New Mecca because he was on the run from their government. I still hadn’t quite processed that whole mess—experimental combat drugs for child soldiers, what the _fuck_ —but it would be irresponsible of me to do anything that might endanger him on that front, that much was certain.

There were no professional guidelines for any of this.

I flipped blankly through the last haphazardly filled pages of my notebook. We were so close to a breakthrough with his self-image. He seemed so resolute. I was certain that if he could only see himself as someone worth saving, he had the capacity to do it.

That thought was interrupted by the receptionist calling in my next client. Only then I realized we must’ve gone quite a bit overtime due to the pause in the music. I quickly stored away the cassette player, took a deep breath, and hoped I was prepared enough for the upcoming session.


	6. Session 6?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a formal apology for this chapter, I offer [this drawing.](https://qwertyprophecy.tumblr.com/post/640934904907104256/)
> 
> Next part coming soon.

The following Thursday my client did not turn up for his appointment.

No amount of pacing around the office made him appear behind the door. Half an hour passed, and I went downstairs to check the waiting room. Finding it empty, I pestered the receptionist whether she was certain that he hadn’t been around.

“The weirdo in the bathrobe? Nah, I’d have noticed.” She laughed. “He’s pretty recognizable.”

The remaining half an hour went by with no sign of him. After what he’d revealed last week, it was an understatement to say I was worried. Keeping in mind the possibility that he may just have lost track of time again, I stayed late in the office in case he might manage to give me a call.

At midnight, I had to return home. Before leaving, I wrote his fake name down in my planner for the next week’s slot, anyways. Perhaps he would return then, unruffled, muttering something about messing up the weekdays.

I had to hope.


	7. Off-Hours

It was Monday, early enough in the morning that only the first few rays of the shy winter sun were giving light to the corridor leading up to my office. That is why I didn’t notice the dark mass slumped in front of my door until I nearly tripped on it.

Blinking away my pre-coffee morning haze, I recognized the form as that of my disappeared client. He was sprawled in an ungraceful half-sitting position, leaning against the door with his eyes closed.

The sight instantly shocked me out of my daze. The plastic bag containing my lunch that I’d been holding fell to the floor with a thump.

“Sir?”

I knelt down in alarm. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that his chest was rising and falling beneath the loose folds of his robe. Relieved, I forced myself to breathe, too. A smell of sweat reached my nostrils.

“Sir,” I said again, wishing I had a name to call out. “You should wake up.” I tried a little louder. “Sir!”

At that, he snapped awake, his whole body jolting violently. Although his eyes opened, they remained empty and unseeing, fixed somewhere far beyond me. His breathing sped up as he started to descend into a state of panic.

“Can you hear me?” I asked.

He turned his head around, as if searching for the source of the sound but failing to notice me right next to him. Whatever he was seeing, it was agitating him. I waved my hand in an attempt to catch his attention.

With great effort, his glassy eyes moved onto me before widening in a way that differed chillingly from his usual restrained range. His hand grasped at his chest as he scrambled to get away from me, backing into the doorframe.

“Sir, everything’s all right—” I started, in my best attempt to sound calming, but he talked over me.

“You’re alive,” he whispered.

“Yes. You’re alive, as well.”

He muttered something so incoherent I couldn’t make it out.

“Sorry?”

“…stop talking so slowly.”

“I’ll try,” I said quickly, although a bad feeling was creeping over me. “Is this any bett—”

“It’s too slow,” he interrupted, and it felt like it wasn’t directed at me, anymore. “Please…”

Unpleasantly aware that every second I dallied was probably too long, I tried to think fast. When it came to stopping panic attacks—was that even what this classified as?—it was usually best to find something tangible to focus on. My voice, apparently in disturbing slow-motion to him, wasn’t going to cut it. Anything visual was out, too, since it was unclear what he was actually seeing at this moment. What senses did that leave? The way he liked to grip that scabbard of his came to mind, but it was nowhere to be seen.

“Listen. Do you have anything with you? Maybe a tape in your pocket?”

He looked confused, straining to understand what I was saying.

“Anything familiar, to use as a focal point to help you return to the present.”

With shaky hands, he patted through his pockets. His brows furrowed in surprise as he hit upon something. He pulled it out, revealing a small stuffed dinosaur. It was old and timeworn, but looked well-cared for.

“Behemoth…?”

The toy seemed to have a profound effect on him. As he held it with a curious reverence, his shaking quelled ever so slightly.

“That’s it,” I encouraged. “Now, let’s slow down your breathing—”

Slowly, gradually, he struggled his way back towards reality, clutching the little dinosaur while I kept pace for his breaths by counting them out aloud. The morning sun rose and spilled a shaft of warm red light across the corridor. When the rays reached my client’s face, he blinked owlishly a few times and put down the toy.

“Are you okay?”

He responded with a deadpan glance that had enough life behind it to make me release a sigh of relief.

“Is it all right if I touch you? Just to take your pulse.”

At his complying grunt, I checked his pulse as well as his pupils. Despite looking like a real wreck in the starkness of sunlight, at least by those measurements his condition was somewhat acceptable. Still, how low a dose had he tried to take?

After I let go of his wrist, he kept staring at his own hands, bathed in the bright red glow.

“Do you know where you are?”

“Outside your office,” he said, looking at me, then back down at his hands.

“That’s right. It’s Monday the 23rd, seven fifty in the morning.”

“…23rd, huh.”

While he was busy with some sort of mental arithmetic, I rummaged around my dropped lunch bag. I opened the bottle of mango juice and held it out to him. “Here, drink this.”

He took a single sip and placed it on the floor.

“How long have you been here?”

“Hard to say.”

“Not the whole weekend, I hope.”

“I don’t know. This week’s been a mess.” He was starting to look a little bashful. “…Wait. Saturday. 7pm. Movie and pizza night.”

“Yes?”

“That happened. That was real,” he said intently, as if trying to convince himself. “She fell asleep on the couch, I took her to bed.”

“What about Sunday?”

“…I don’t know. I couldn’t sleep without waking her up with the noise, so I went out, and everything got…” A realization seemed to dawn on him. “It’s Monday? Shit. _Shit_. I gotta get back home. She shouldn’t be left alone like that.”

“Of course.”

He returned the dinosaur back into his pocket and scrambled up, swaying only a little.

“Do you want me to take you home?”

“No.”

“I’d make sure you get back safe.“

“No,” he repeated, even more adamant.

If I’d had a car to give him a lift in, I’d have insisted. As it was, there wasn’t much of an argument to be made. He had a right to his privacy, after all.

I still accompanied him downstairs, since he couldn’t really keep me from doing that. In a hurry he strode through the waiting room and reception area, but at the front door, I stopped him.

“You’ll be back on Thursday, right?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You sure you’ll manage?”

“I have to.” Although it was subtle, I noticed his hand sliding into his pocket, the one where that toy was. “I need to go home.”

With that, he pushed past me through the door.

I watched his receding back as he dashed past a gaggle of morning commuters. Despite the tentative sun, the enclave of tall buildings kept the streets submerged in deep shadow into which my client soon disappeared. Since it didn’t look like he was about to straight up collapse onto the pavement or anything, I turned back indoors.

“That guy’s still around, huh,” the receptionist commented upon my return. “When’d he even get in? You didn’t tell him about the busted fire exit, did you?”

“No,” I said, rubbing my eyes. Barely past eight and I was already spent. “He must’ve noticed it himself.”

“Sneaky little dude. What’s his deal, anyways? Does he think he’s like a ninja or something?”

I politely ignored her by mumbling something about having to prepare for a client, and escaped into the elevator. Once upstairs, I gathered up the spread contents of my lunch bag and scribbled down a few remarks of the incident into my notebook.

Not knowing what else could possibly be done to improve the situation, I popped open my can of coffee.


	8. Session 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, this was a surprisingly tricky one to write. I meant to get it done a week ago, yet here we are, a whole rewrite later. Thank you for your patience.

That Thursday the temperature dropped below freezing. The sun peeked out again, bright but uncaringly cold. After the departure of the morning’s client—a depressed widow struggling with social anxiety, sad yet straightforward—I had my lunch and got out the cassette player. By now the action slotted into my routine seamlessly. Flicking through the radio channels provided a distraction from the gnawing concern.

The receptionist announced the arrival of my temporally wayward client at 1 o’clock sharp, not a minute off. The punctuality could’ve been considered a good sign, but somehow I found it vaguely ominous.

What lightened that ominosity was the appearance of my client as he walked in. As a new addition to his robe, he was wearing a long scarf, hand-stitched together from what looked like pillow sheets decorated all over with colorful marker pen drawings. As I got up to greet him, I could make out two stick figures riding a dinosaur, one of them smaller and the other brandishing a sword.

“Good to see you,” I said, a smile tugging at my lips. “Did your daughter make that?”

The question threw him off in a way nothing else had before. “Uh, yeah,” he sputtered while his serious expression turned into a flustered one. “She likes crafting.”

I realized what I’d said. “Ah, sorry. You don’t call her your daughter, do you.”

“It’s fine.” He couldn’t quite hide the uncertain delight that settled into the corners of his eyes.

As he stood there awkwardly, I noticed his scabbard wasn’t with him today, either.

“Everything okay with the two of you?” I asked. “After what happened on the weekend.”

The delight died out as quickly as it had appeared. “She said she was all right,” he muttered, but his tone was filled with guilt.

“And yourself? I’ve got to be honest, you made me worried.”

“You shouldn’t be. Neither of you.”

I furrowed my brows. “Are you seriously telling me it’s fine for you to be in that state?”

“Last week was… not ideal. I messed up.” He fiddled sullenly with the corner of the scarf. “I think the girl’s catching on to how poorly this might go.”

“You’re a lot more coherent now,” I noted.

“Yeah. I took a big dose. Most of what was left.”

“Oh.”

We both knew my response was woefully inadequate. Not seeming to care, or at least projecting the image of someone who didn’t, my client proceeded to sit down and rummage his pockets for a tape. Abashed, I followed him to the couches.

“Do you want to talk about last week?”

“No.” He paused for a fleeting, hesitant moment. “I want to talk about something else.”

“Of course,” I said neutrally, unable to guess what he had in mind. “Please, go ahead.”

He found the tape, but instead of putting it into the player he held it in his hand for a long while, deep in thought. Not drifting out of focus like he tended to, but alert to the point of restlessness. Finally, he seemed to come to a conclusion. He dropped his tape into the compartment and closed the hatch with a snap.

“There’s something you need to know about me,” he said while he watched the cassette reels begin rotating inside the player. A deep, droning synth struggled its way through, its low frequency distorted by the poor quality speakers. “I’ve killed people. A lot of them.”

“You were a soldier. I’m aware.”

“That’s not what I mean. After that, after I couldn’t even remember having been one.” He gave me a strange look, halfway between provocative and self-conscious, like he was trying to get a reaction out of me but wasn’t quite ready to face it. “I kept doing it. All they had to do was to give me a name and I’d go kill them, and everyone around them.”

“Who do you mean by they?”

“My employers. I was an assassin.”

“…All right.” I put down my pen. “I’m curious, why are you telling me this now?”

“You should know what kind of person you’re dealing with.”

“And what kind of a person is that?”

“Someone capable of taking lives without second thought.” His tone was completely vacant, like he’d pushed down any semblance of emotion to be able to talk. “Whatever makes normal people flinch at even the idea of killing, it’s absent in me.”

There was nothing there to betray what his intent was. “Do you want to find out why that is?”

“No, I want you to _understand_.” He stared straight into my eyes. “My psychiatrist? I killed him.”

An icy silence followed his words as he awaited my reaction and I, to my embarrassment, simply blanked.

“Don’t you think I might kill you, too?” he prodded, words tinged with a cruelty that wasn’t directed towards me.

“Have you, at any point during our sessions, wanted to kill me?” I asked, slowly.

“No,” he replied, fully candid. “But can you really trust me? I wouldn’t. I already thought I did it, while hallucinating. Mistook you for him.”

I fell quiet. The tension in the room had grown strange; it felt as if he was trying to make me feel threatened to prove some sort of point, but he failed at being particularly convincing. It was hard to be intimidated while he sat there with his shoulders stooped, almost curling into himself, the look in his eyes more scared than scary.

“If I ever start feeling unsafe, I will let you know,” I promised. “Right now, all I’m getting from you is a strong desire for me to see you in a different light.”

“Because you don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

His posture stiffened further. “That I’m not a good person.”

“If judgment is what you’re looking for, I’m afraid that’s not something I can give you,” I said, straightening in my seat. “I’m a therapist, not a judge. All I can do is help you to get better.”

“And what if I can’t be better?”

“I remember you being quite determined to try. What changed?”

“Nothing.” He lowered his head. “Nothing changes. It all still goes down the same as before.”

“The withdrawal symptoms?”

“The harder I try to let go, the worse it gets. At some point, I’ve got to wonder if it’s wrong of me to want that.”

I raised an eyebrow. “It’s wrong to want to get better?”

“What is it that I’m really trying to escape?” He muttered. “Being stuck in an eternity of reliving the worst things I’ve ever done? Maybe what I’ve done can’t be escaped. Maybe I was always meant to—” He swallowed, and got so quiet I struggled to hear him over the music. “—burn in hell for it.”

“You feel like this is some kind of divine punishment?”

“I don’t know if I believe in that stuff. Karma and whatnot. The world’d be a whole lot different if that’s how it worked.” He sighed. “But you’ve got to admit there’s something pretty karmic about this.”

“Perhaps, if that’s the lens through which you choose to find meaning in what’s happened. Even then, only if you find your worst deeds to be reflective of who you are as a whole.”

He looked like he had a reply in mind, but couldn’t quite vocalize it.

“I’m sorry you’re having a tough time. I really am.” Although my words felt helplessly vapid, I tried to fill them with as much sincerity as I could. “However, if you’re looking for someone to tell you to give up, this is the wrong place to come to. You know that. It’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure why I’m here, anymore.”

“You told me you had something you needed to take care of.”

“Right. Her.” For the first time, the mention didn’t uplift his spirits. “Don’t you think it’d be more responsible to find her a new home? A family without an expiration date.”

“Why haven’t you?”

“Selfishness.” He looked down at his scarf. “I couldn’t stand the thought.”

“I doubt she’d like it much either.”

“She might be better off if I’m not there to mess her up,” he said, trying to hide his reluctance.

“It’s not an uncommon fear that a parent’s personal issues might cause harm to their children,” I pointed out. “The fact that you’re choosing to work on those issues puts you on a better path than many.”

“You’re thinking of actual parents. Normal people, not…” He finished the sentence with only a grimace. When he started again, his guise of apathy dropped a little. “You claimed that I’m not a psychopath, but that was when you didn’t know I was fine with fucking murdering people for a living.”

“You don’t sound fine.”

“That’s because I know it’s not right, the way killing never affected me. I might as well have been cutting through butter.” He shot me a look of warning. “Don’t try to tell me that’s normal.”

“Perhaps not,” I conceded. “What is normal, though, is the phenomenon of growing numb to constantly repeating experiences, no matter how terrible. It’s not a sign of a defect, but a testament to the brain’s ability to adapt.”

He thought for a moment. “You could put it that way, sure. My brain adapted into something inhuman.”

“That’s not quite what I—“

“No, really, maybe you’re right. Maybe we were all real people, once.” He gazed up into the blue nothingness beyond the roof window, fractured by the patterns of frost that had formed across the glass. “Just not anymore.”

“You believe something irreparable has taken place?”

“It’s not only the killing.” He kept watching the sky, brows furrowed at some memory. “I discussed it with another NULL—another person like me. What living with the drug for too long did to us. Using the powers it gave.”

I was distracted by the offhand slip that these people had been named ‘null’. Without value? The intent was unsubtle, even for a government program. I forced myself to stay on topic. “Are you talking about the time manipulation?”

He nodded, eyes glazing over slightly. “I’ve seen the same people die, over and over. I’ve felt myself die a hundred times and more. It lasts so long, sometimes… watching someone’s flesh unravel, fiber by fiber, while looking for who to cut down next.” He returned from the momentary daze, looking ill-at-ease with what he’d let out. “She believed that’s why we’re like this.”

“I imagine there aren’t many people who can relate to your experiences. How did you find it, having a conversation with someone who could?”

“It wasn’t really a conversation. More of a fight.”

“You disagreed?”

“No. She was trying to kill me.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he muttered. “I killed her.”

I lapsed quiet, unsure what to say. “Even then, I’m sorry.”

“It was impossible to avoid. Every future I could see ended in death.” His head drooped, and he looked very tired. “That’s what we are. How we end up.”

In the following lull, the music died out. The player still hummed as the last few empty rounds of the tape’s A-side made their way around, until once again the play button snapped up. I waited for my client to flip the cassette, but he made no move to do so. He simply stared in the vague direction of the coffee table, his expression closed off.

After a while, I cut the silence short. “These things that happened, that you believe distanced you from humanity—do you want to talk about them?”

“What more is there to say?” he asked glumly, not budging from his stillness.

“Thus far you’ve insisted you never felt anything towards your work as an assassin. Yet you seem to be feeling a whole lot right now. It doesn’t match up.”

“I don’t know what I felt, back then,” he amended, uncomfortable with my doubt. “Does it matter? I still did it.”

Despite stopping momentarily, he still seemed to be searching for an answer, so I waited. There was something unsettling about hearing nothing but the faint noise of our breathing and the muffled sounds of faraway traffic. I hadn’t realized how used to the music I had gotten until it was missing.

“I tried to tell myself that what I did could be… honorable,” he continued after a while. “Like the movies. That I’d been a war hero like I'd been told, that the people I killed were dangerous.” He paused and scowled in distaste. “But the truth is, I always knew it didn’t matter who they were or what they did. They could’ve been anyone and I would’ve killed them, just to get my medicine.”

I frowned. “You were given the drug that kept you lucid as payment?”

“Yeah,” he said glumly, shrinking deeper into the couch. “It’s the only thing I cared about. An addict, that’s all I’ve ever been.”

“Hold on,” I said, failing at keeping my tone from slipping towards perturbed. “I simply cannot skim over the fact that your employers were using chemical dependency as a method of coercion. Wasn’t it your psychiatrist who gave the drug to you?”

My client’s gaze flitted, apprehensive. “He was with them, too.”

“So that’s why—” I tapped absent-mindedly at the abandoned notebook on my lap. In my head, the full picture was finally forming, and it wasn’t pretty. “It was never his intent to help you, but to keep you exactly where you were.”

His mouth tightened into a thin line. “…Yeah.”

“That explains a lot.” I let out a deep exhale to regain composure. It was not my place to get agitated. “Honestly, it’s remarkable that you managed to get out, in the end. What changed?”

“He asked me to do something I couldn’t.”

I waited for him to elaborate. It took him a begrudging while to add: “It was a family. I was supposed to kill them. I just... couldn't.”

“You did care, then.”

He shrugged off the tacit remark. “After that, I realized to what extent he’d lied to me,” he said, voice turning cold. “That’s when I understood the others. Their anger, I mean. The desire for revenge.”

“Despite being convinced that you couldn't feel emotions, in that moment you could?”

“I didn’t like that feeling. What it made me do. I didn’t need to kill him. There were no orders, no danger, yet I couldn’t stop.” His voice trembled, but he carried on, quieter. “Feeling that way… it was terrifying.” The confession was barely a whisper.

“You felt so much it terrified you?” I considered. “So when people described you as emotionless, did you find it comforting to embrace that narrative, on some level?”

“Maybe,” he said dully and looked down at his hands. “I don’t even care if he deserved it or not. To me, it was just yet another murder I was made to commit by some force outside my control. Except this time, it was myself that I wasn’t in control of.”

“Well, I believe we’ve found the root cause for your issues with control and autonomy. Between the drug, the war, and—please excuse my frankness—being exploited by your employers, have you ever been allowed to simply live your own life?”

“I don’t remember.” He gave me a tired glance. “I know all of that was pretty fucked up.”

“I’m glad we agree.”

“Even then… I don’t want it to excuse what I’ve done.”

“Good. If you wish to reclaim control, taking accountability for your actions can be empowering. Keep in mind, however,” I stressed and gave him a pointed look, ”that accountability isn’t synonymous with retribution.”

He frowned, not quite following.

“I understand you long for some kind of penance,” I expounded. “Perhaps that’s why it’s so hard to let go of the things that cause you suffering, like the traumatic memories that you get stuck in. You might try to pay for your guilt in this way—by burning in hell, as you put it—but as you’ve found, that might never end.”

“So what then?” he asked flatly.

“There are many ways of dealing with one’s past. You’ve tried running away, to no avail, and you’ve tried self-condemnation. But there’s an approach I don’t think you’ve yet considered.”

He didn’t say anything, but his expression turned a little nervous, probably guessing what I was about to suggest.

“Forgiveness. Empathy towards yourself and your situation, and others like you. Finding penance in simply moving on and becoming better.” I paused to examine his reaction, but he didn’t give one. “Of course, it’s up to you. You get to choose what accountability means to you. That’s part of claiming control.”

He was quiet for a long while. “Empathy?” he repeated. “I don’t know if that’s possible.”

“What makes it impossible?”

The quietness prolonged further, to the point it started feeling like the absence of music was growing louder. My client stared down at his palms, hunched over, straining under the pressure of his answer.

“I was asked if I enjoyed it,” he said abruptly. “Killing, that is. I couldn’t bring myself to say no.” His fingers curled into trembling fists. “I couldn’t even stop. I’d kill even if I wasn’t ordered to, lost in… withdrawal? An adrenalin rush? Some… uncontrollable bloodlust.”

Little was visible of his downturned face, obscured in the shadow of his bangs, but his voice cracked with shame.

“You don’t trust that you can stop? Even if you’re away from the circumstances that caused it?”

“I’m not away from _me_.” He raised his head, barely enough for me to see the unbridled fear in his eyes. It was a wild look, more reminiscent of how he’d been on Monday than his usual restrained self. “When time slows, I can see all the possibilities. What I can do, what I could’ve done. Nothing constrains me. I could do _anything_.”

His voice was tightening like a violin string. “That’s why I hated killing him. I hated that his last act was to prove that he was right about me. How I’m… subhuman,” he whispered. “What if I kill someone else, what then? What if I kill the —” he choked, unable to finish the sentence.

“Please, breathe.”

At the reminder, he let out a reluctant, trembling exhale. Some of the agitation drained out, replaced with weariness.

“Should we put up the music again?” I suggested, surveying his attempt at steadying his unraveled breathing.

“No,” he grunted. “I’m present enough.”

“As you wish.”

Out of habit, he avoided my studying gaze, mortified by what he’d let show. But then, he turned back, facing me with the resigned air of someone who had nowhere to run, anymore.

“You look like you’ve got something to say,” he muttered in a tired tone. “Just get on with it.”

“Very well,” I began, gentle yet resolute. “I do believe there are indeed infinite possibilities of what you could do next. What closes most of those doors, however, is your sense of identity, lost as it may have been for some time. Are you someone who destroys, or someone who nurtures? This… bloodlust, is it an immutable part of your personality or, as with your supposed inability to feel emotions, is it merely be a construct? A narrative that sounds convincing since it explains some of your experiences, but ultimately fails to encompass who you truly are. Here we have, I believe, another choice you get to make.”

“You really think I get to decide who I am?” The question was thick with doubt.

“Oh, I don’t know the real answer to that. Psychologists a whole lot cleverer than me can’t agree on how much freedom people actually have over their nature. But what we can change, and what my entire profession hinges on, are the narratives we tell about ourselves. That’s what I advice you to carefully consider. A defective being cursed with bloodlust that deserves to burn in hell? I do understand where that narrative comes from—it certainly feeds a hunger for self-judgment. But if it leaves you feeling afraid and out of control, perhaps it’s time to find a new one." I paused for a moment before concluding.

"So, which story do you choose to tell? The one about a monster fated to die? Or another one, about someone whose circumstances put him on a grim path—someone who perhaps did terrible things, but who has the capacity to do better. To overcome fate, and to heal.”

While I talked, my client had turned completely motionless, hardly blinking. There was still a tension in the room, but now it felt fragile, like a single gesture could cause it to collapse.

I only had one more thing to add. “Today, you wanted to explain to me why you couldn’t see yourself as a good person. Now, in return, would you like me to explain why I could?"

The movement was imperceptible, but he may have nodded.

“Despite everything, you’ve told your story to me. It was never the one about a monster.”

I looked at him, at this unkempt young man in a worn-out robe and a ridiculous scarf, and he looked back with uncertain eyes.

”You are terribly, painfully human. That’s what you’ve shown, during these sessions. How much you feel. How hard you try. How you love that little girl you gave a home to.”

He said nothing.

We sat for a long while in a silence that had grown different, somehow, as if the music that wasn’t playing had reached the end of a track and begun a new one. My client covered his face with his hand, so I set my gaze up to the window, into the stark blue sky.

It was hard to say how much time passed. It seemed to go by faster.

He finally broke the spell by leaning over to press eject on the cassette player. Still quiet, he went through the now-familiar motions of taking the tape, getting up and paying.

“Thanks,” he said.

I nodded.

He left without another word. I knew I wasn’t supposed to say anything else, either.


	9. Session 8, and Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are, at the last part.
> 
> But first I would like to direct your attention to Lune_BBQ’s [glorious art of a therapist throw-down I’d love to see](https://twitter.com/lune_bbq/status/1358495683586580480)
> 
> Thank you, everyone, for the encouraging comments.
> 
> It’s been nice.

The next Thursday it started raining again, a thick wet sleet that sloshed down in great showers, accompanied by a fog that turned the city lights blurry and dreamlike. I’d improved my setup with a couple of small buckets and immediately gotten good use of one of them as a brand new leak sprouted from the ceiling.

There was something soothing about how the occasional drip-drop of the accumulating water contrasted with the muffled sound of the heavy deluge outside. All the bucket had to do was to hold on till the rain ended.

The receptionist called. “It’s your 1 o’clock client, doc.”

“Thank you. Please let him in.” Our usual exchange remained unchanging as ever, and I found a sense of comfort in that.

This time, my client did not come in drenched. He had an umbrella with him, which he shook dry before entering the office. With the same diligence he left it leaning against the doorway, in the spot where he’s once placed his sword. Even its color was reminiscent of the scabbard; only the function was different.

The man himself was in a rough shape, there was no way around it. His supply had to be nearing its end. He was still wearing that new scarf, but now it only accentuated how his face was as pale as those pillow sheets. Once he’d crossed the room and sagged onto his couch, he gave me a self-aware glower, as if daring me to comment on his bloodshot eyes.

“How’s the girl?” I decided to ask instead. I closed the partway abandoned notes I’d been mindlessly flipping through before his arrival, and moved over to the couches.

“She’s okay. Worried,” he replied, voice surprisingly soft despite his otherwise disheveled state. “Tries not to show it.”

“You could tell her that it’s okay to do so.”

“I probably should. She’s usually so upfront, it’s odd when she’s not.”

“An observant kid like her must’ve figured you’d worry about her worrying.”

He sighed. “At least she’s made friends at the playground, so she’s not stuck at home all the time.” He paused for a second, then added with a tender kind of disbelief: “Always comes back, for some reason.”

I smiled. “Those homecooked noodles must be very good.”

“Must be.”

He kept silent for a good while. Right as I was about to question if he was still there, he moved again, taking out a tape and inserting it into the cassette player.

“Actually…” he said before pressing play, quite intent despite feigning a casual air. “I don’t want to talk, right now.”

“That’s fine. We can just sit.”

He switched on the player and turned up the volume. Upon finding that sweet spot where the sound was audible through the rain but didn’t make the speakers crackle, he maneuvered himself into a comfortable slouch. Outwardly he was staring up at the sleet-streaked window, but he seemed too tired to properly focus.

Following his example, I elected to let go of my usual straight-backed posture and drift out into the music alongside him.

The song that played was a kind of a jazzy one, somewhere between cozy and melancholic, fitting pleasantly together with the additional percussion track provided by the rain. As time passed, I began to realize that it was only that single song on the tape, recorded to play on a loop.

I glanced at my client, whose eyes had drooped half-lidded. I wouldn’t have minded in the slightest if he’d taken the opportunity to catch some sleep, but he stayed awake.

The track looped over once more. Possibly. It was easy to forget what the original starting point had been and imagine that it was all a single, indefinite piece. A lone moment, continuously stretching out.

Endless.

But then, of course, it ended. At thirty minutes the tune faded and the tape ran out, as all tapes do. Even the fervor of the rain had abated somewhat, only continuing as a calm pitter-patter against the glass.

My client rose from his slumped position to open up the player and turn the tape around, before falling back again.

On the B-side, there was another song. A lot slower, equally wistful. A simple melody repeated itself over a backdrop of billowing synth pads, gradually expanding. I did not know the meaning of these specific songs, but I had an impression that it wasn’t my job to find out.

What was my job? It seemed that we’d finally ran out of curveballs to throw and secrets to reveal. Medically speaking, I remained exactly as useless as I’d been on the very first week. Psychologically, well…

My client’s expression was hard to parse as always, but I’d gotten pretty good at this by now. He looked tranquil. Exhausted, sure, but the strained air of his forced indifference was gone. Like he was simply allowing himself to be there.

When there were less than fifteen minutes left on the clock, he began to speak.

“Y’know,” he said casually, “I'd never really believed there was a way for me to get through this alive.”

“Is that so?” I said, merely to indicate that I was listening.

“I came here to handle the symptoms so the girl wouldn’t have to put up with them. Maybe last a couple more months. Make the most of it.”

“Understandable, I suppose.”

”But I think there was another reason, too.” Absently, he shifted his posture. “Seeing a therapist, pretending like it was going somewhere… that’s how things used to be, before everything collapsed. Perhaps I hoped it’d feel familiar as much as I feared it would.”

“You hoped for familiarity, despite how it had been?”

“It’d been a lie, but a reassuring one to live in. Like my service medal.” It was unclear what he was referring to, but that didn’t seem to matter. “It may have been an awful routine, but it was still a routine. Anything to hold on to. That’s the feeling I came here to find.”

“Did you find it?” I asked quietly.

“No.” He huffed, almost like the start of a dry little chuckle. “It’s been… different.”

“Well, in this case I’m glad to not have met expectations.”

“Yeah, this didn’t go quite as planned,” he said, his voice light. “I honestly did mean to find a new home for the girl, but the thought of leaving her got harder every week.” The lightness gave way to a kind of offhand solemnity. “Turns out I’m still unwilling to die.”

“Things have changed, haven’t they?” My question was half rhetorical, half cautiously hoping.

“Some have, some haven’t.” He was staring at the cassette player, mesmerized by the minute movement of the tape’s rotation. “Time’s still slowing, and it still feels like I’m watching individual grains of sand drop down in an hourglass. The visions and the memories remain there, ready to haunt me, but…” He tore his gaze away from the player and back to me. “Maybe it’s possible to bear them. Share the space with them, until the grains of sand have landed and last of the drug is gone.”

“Do you think you’re ready to face them with compassion?”

“I don’t know,” he said with honesty. “You were right, though. Trying to do it any other way, I wouldn't pull through.”

Solemnly, I nodded.

“But I got nothing if not time to learn while the seconds crawl by." A sliver of lightheartedness crept back into his tone. “You must be pleased.”

That got a short chuckle from me. “I’m pleased with your optimism, at the very least.”

He shrugged. “Who knows if any of this matters at all, in the end. I might still just die.”

“It’s possible you won’t. You’ve worked hard to slow down the withdrawal. Isn’t there a good chance you’ve succeeded?”

“Hard to say. There’s nobody alive who knows how the drug works.”

“The people who made it, you mean? Honestly, I’m not a big fan.” I couldn’t keep myself from sounding spiteful. “Could it be that they were mistaken, or lying about its fatality?”

“That’s the hope, although unlikely. When my body’s been pretty much flooded with the stuff since I was a kid, and with just about every other NULL gone… it takes some nerve to think I might survive.”

“Nothing wrong with nerve. You’re still alive, aren’t you.”

“And so are you,” he mumbled. “Another improvement from my previous one.”

He turned sheepish at my raised eyebrows.

“Too dark, was it?”

“Oh, I’m a big advocate of humor as part of the recovery process, dark as it may inevitably be. You took me by surprise, is all.”

He leaned lightly on the armrest, growing thoughtful. “There have been a lot of surprises, in the past weeks,” he said. “There might still be some left.”

“What are you thinking of?”

“That week I, uh, went a bit off the rails. I’d gone multiple days with next to nothing. The stage you got to me at, I don’t usually return from. Not without taking another dose.”

“Yet you found your way out.”

“Apparently,” he muttered. “I meant to thank you for that.”

“The toy dinosaur, do you still have it?”

His hand shifted over his pocket. “Yeah.”

“Good.”

Gradually, the music faded out without returning. We sat through the silence of the remaining empty tape, until the player stopped with an air of finality.

My client took out his tape and studied it, head tilted in contemplation.

“Pulling off improbable things,” he murmured, before returning the tape to his pocket and looking back up at me. “I never told you, but that was kinda my whole deal, back in the day.” His tone was flippant but his eyes sincere when he added: “Might as well beat the odds now. For old times’ sake.”

“Yes,” I replied. “Please keep finding ways to surprise.”

He stood up. As usual, he scoured his pockets and held out a fistful of notes and coins towards me.

“Ah, no, I can’t accept that,” I said, refusing to extend my hand to receive them. “We’ve barely done anything this whole session.”

Unflustered, he dumped the money on the coffee table.

“Cheeky.”

He ignored my remark, but there was obvious amusement in his step as he walked to the door.

I called out after him. “Once you’re through with all that’s been weighing you down, you’re going to be quite a character, aren’t you?”

With a curt wave of the umbrella he’d picked up, he closed the door and left.

I sat back. Perhaps my job was very close to done, after all. It was up to him, now.

Always had been.

That’s how it went, with every client. They were the ones who chose to step into my office, and the ones to find their way onwards from it. I might fret over the uncertainties of my duties or my aptitude, but the truth was, my most important role always had been merely to keep company. To stand as their witness to the imperfect struggle of being human.

I noticed the rain had ended.

\---

It was not a Thursday.

I was at the office, sorting out paperwork after the day’s last client. As the early evening reached its blue hour, I took a break to catch that brief moment after the clouds had undressed from their sunset purples but before the cool tones gave way to the glow of the high-rise buildings, street lamps and neon signs.

While I watched, it started snowing outside. Proper snow, not sleet; a gentle scattering of pure white flakes that floated down to gather on the roof window. It would likely not remain in that form for long once morning came, so I left my work for a moment further to marvel at it while I still could.

There was a knock on the office door.

“Yes?” I called, hastily reeling my thoughts back down from the sky. I hoped it wasn’t any of my fellow businessowners in the building. When they came visiting, it was typically to complain about my more unusual clients, the ones they deemed unseemly. After a rather indelicate warning from my part they no longer dared to approach my clients themselves, contending with bothering me instead.

That wasn’t who it was. When the door was pushed open the figure revealed was that of my nameless client, with specks of snow in his hair and on the scarf, and an earbud wire hanging from one ear. He looked like he hadn’t slept since we last met, but somehow he was still standing.

Instead of coming in, he leaned against the doorway and stared at me from there.

“Hey,” was his blunt greeting.

“Good evening,” I said, the surprise defaulting me to formality. “Is everything all right?”

“I took the final dose,” he informed me, his tone strictly factual. “The last remaining drop.”

I rose up from my desk. The small move seemed disproportionately affected by gravity. “How do you feel?”

He gave a vague shrug. “Gotta wait and see.”

“And the girl?”

“I got someone to look after her so she doesn’t have to watch. The old lady from the video rental. She’s staying at her place.”

“Fair enough.”

With some effort, he pushed himself off the doorframe, facing the corridor. “Anyways, just wanted to let you know that you can clear my slot off your schedule.”

“You’re not coming back?”

“Either I’ll be free and won’t need you, or I’ll be dead. Whatever happens, you won’t be seeing me.”

I felt my chest tighten. “Make sure it’s the first one, will you?”

Perhaps sensing my trepidation, he looked back at me one last time, his expression shifting into something firmer.

“I made a promise. I told my daughter I’d come back for her.” The intensity that had awoken in his eyes became tinged with a sober melancholy. “I broke a promise to her once, and I’m never doing that again.”

I nodded, understanding.

A faint smile formed on his face. Small and unpracticed, slightly lopsided.

Ready to leave, he turned away and headed towards the fire exit. I stepped after him into the corridor, right as he slipped out through the window into the snow and the deepening dusk. Through the glass, I saw him stop for a moment before heading down. Out of his pocket, he pulled a portable cassette player, turned it on, and placed the other earbud in his ear.

There was a clatter of feet on the rickety steel stairs of the fire escape. Gradually, the sound became more distant, and then he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [x](https://qwertyprophecy.tumblr.com/post/642835619029106688/)


End file.
